Vaccination drive impossible without mini clinics, HC told

MADURAI: Defending its move to outsource staff nurses and multipurpose workers to the newly established Mini Clinics in Tamil Nadu, the State government told the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court that it would be impossible to carry out Covid vaccination drive without the Mini Clinics and that the delay in appointing staff would affect the exercise.

Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine stated so in the counter affidavit filed on Monday in a PIL filed by Vairam Santhosh, opposing the outsourcing of staff. He pointed out the challenges in planning for vaccinating the entire population without letting down guard on the diseases, and said that delaying the employment of essential staff would cause irreparable damage to the State’s capacity to fight the pandemic.

He clarified that the staff nurse and multipurpose worker posts in the Mini Clinics were purely temporary in nature, initially sanctioned for only a year, and that the appointees would be employed under National Health Mission (NHM) and through respective district health societies.

The director stated that the Executive Sub-Committee of the NHM has permitted the State to fill up the posts on outsourcing basis up to March 2021 and that the salary for the staff were to be paid from NHM funds.

Hence it would be incorrect to compare them to regular posts which are filled through Medical Recruitment Board, he added, and prayed for the dismissal of the PIL. A division bench of Justices M M Sundresh and S Ananthi adjourned the matter to next week, adding that status quo would be maintained till then.