Odisha: Contractual NHM nurses allege government apathy amidst fight against coronavirus

Minati Singha | TNN | May 4, 2020, 23:33 IST

A factory workers prepares PPE kits

BHUBANESWAR: When the Covid-19 outbreak has put everything into standstill, doctors, nurses and other health workers are not breathing easy.
As many as 4000 contractual nurses under the National Health Mission (NHM) in Odisha have been engaged in different Covid hospitals and are at a greater risk of contracting the virus. But they feel their need and service has not been paid attention by the government unlike the regular doctors and nurses. Despite performing their duties amid various challenges like shortage of minimal protective gears like masks and PPEs, these nurses neither received any advance salary, promotion nor any incentives s provided to regular nurses and doctors are demotivating for them.
“You never know which patient is infected and who is not. When we are doing out duties we are constantly under the fear of being exposed to the virus. There is a constant fear and anxiety, if we are putting the life of our family members at risk as well. But we have been given n95 masks and provided with plain cloth or non-sterilized masks,” said a NHM nurse.
They alleged that even though the state government had announced to regularise all NHM nurses in March 2019, not a single staff nurse has been regularised yet. The 3998 NHM staff nurses have been deployed in more than 30 Sick New-born Care Units (SNCU), district head quarter hospitals (DHH), area hospitals, community health centres and primary health centres of the state.
“The NHM staff nurses never did less work because they are contractual employees or they are getting less salary from their regular counterparts, but there is a limit of showing negligence and ignoring the major service providers. There must be some motivational factor to work in these difficult times. When so many new programmes and policies are being made every day for frontline health workers keeping in view the emerging situations due to Covid-19, then why the nurses are neglected over the years,” questioned another staff nurse requesting anonymity due to the fear of being targeted.
The state government had announced in February 2019 to regularise all contractual employees of health department who have completed six years of service and issued gazette notification in March 2019, but not a single staff nurse has been regularised yet. Even several reminders have been sent to prepare a gradation list of eligible contractual employees under different schemes but nothing happened.
The nurses said, they feel demoralised when Odisha government sanctioned three months advance salary and also gave promotion to senior staff nurses and doctors, who are highly paid. “We don’t know where our fault is. They are (regular doctors and nurses) distributing sweets for getting promotion in front of us, but we did not event got regularised after 10-15 year service,” said another NHM staff nurse.
Besides, the risk of infection, stress and anxiety of being separated from their families, these staff nurses are also facing social ostracism, harassment and even assault.
“We are also deprived of other facilities like government quarters and many house-owners are asking us to look for other houses as they are posted in Covid hospitals. We are not demanding the government but it is our prayer,” said a staff nurse.