Nurses of Government Rajaji Hospital with badges in Madurai on Monday.
| Photo Credit: R. ASHOK
Nurses of Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai, on Monday wore badges opposing Government Order 204 that emphasised on downsizing staff strength.Raising serious concerns over persistent nursing shortage, healthcare workers in the State warned that the recent government directives threatened both patient care and job security of thousands of medical professionals. Current staffing levels had fallen drastically short of benchmarks set by the National Medical Commission and the Indian Public Health Standards. Medical associations had reported that hospitals were functioning with a single nurse where four were formally required.Nurses said that tensions peaked following the issuance of G.O. 204 (dated July 21, 2026) by the Health and Family Welfare Department. The directive had ordered the administrative reassignment of 210 nursing posts of seven medical college hospitals at Namakkal, Krishnagiri, The Nilgiris, Ariyalur, Kallakurichi, Tiruvallur, and Tiruppur to four major hubs comprising Government Stanley Hospital in Chennai, Salem, Tiruchi, and Chengalpattu.The nurses said transfer of staff between resource-strapped facilities was counter productive. Rather than redistributing an already insufficient workforce, the govenrment needed to create net-new positions.Further, healthcare professionals warned that the reassignments would severely increase workload, leading to delayed medical attention and decline in quality of treatment. Compounding the anxieties were restructuring efforts to abolish 192 public health nursing posts and 100 hospital posts to staff 17 Emergency Care and Recovery Centres.Also, rural infrastructure faced heightened vulnerability, while only about 1,400 permanent nursing posts existed to support the public health sector consisting of around 2,500 Primary Health Centres. The downsizing threatened to further compromise rural healthcare access, the nurses added.Additionally, plans to fill faculty roles in six newly established nursing colleges on a temporary, contractual basis also drew criticism for blocking career progression, adding fuel to a long-standing controversy surrounding job regularisation.Despite election promises to regularise nurses working on contract after five years, approximately 6,500 nurses selected through the Medical Services Recruitment Board remained trapped in a consolidated pay system for up to nine years due to lack of creation of permanent position.The doctors and nurses maintained that creating permanent posts was vital to fulfilling regularisation promises and safeguarding the integrity of the State’s public healthcare system. Published - August 03, 2026 07:32 pm IST
