Nurses protest as NMC ends contracts, offers work on daily wages

Nagpur: Over 400 contract nurses or paramedical staff recruited by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) for Covid-19 duties staged a silent protest on Monday after their contract was terminated. The civic body has now asked them to work on daily wage basis, where they will be paid Rs500 per day, only when they are called for vaccination duties.
“With current vaccine crisis, if there is no vaccine drive, we will not get any wage,” said paramedical staff Ritu Meshram (name changed).
A delegation of paramedical staff met mayor Dayashankar Tiwari, additional municipal commissioner Ram Joshi and chief medical officer Dr Sanjay Chilkar over the issue. They claimed that most of them joined NMC during the first wave of Covid-19. At first, they worked in Covid Care Centres and later NMC deployed them at vaccination centres.
“Most of us left private hospital jobs and joined the civic body. From day one, we were told by NMC that we were hired on contract basis for a monthly honorarium of Rs25,000 and had even signed bonds,” said the para-medical staff.
“Now, NMC wants us to work for Rs500 daily wage basis and that too only when they require our service for administering vaccines,” agitated nurses told TOI.
TOI also saw letters issued by NMC’s chief medical officer Dr Sanjay Chilkar, who asked heads of all concerned health centres to relieve all contractual staff with immediate effect. In his letter, Dr Chilkar pointed out that as cases of Covid-19 have declined, so all contractual staff may be relieved from their jobs.
Dr Chilkar has also written similar letters to deans of GMCH, IGGMC and AIIMS Nagpur, to relieve contractual paramedical staff appointed by NMC in their hospitals. He, however, asked GMCH and AIIMS to continue the services of lab technicians.
An agitated paramedical staff member Pratim Kotnake (name changed) said most of the paramedical staff had left their jobs in private hospitals to work for NMC. “Since we joined NMC, we worked vigorously along with the administration in the entire pandemic period of both first and second waves,” he said.
“Our workload increased at vaccination centres. Official timing of the job was from 10am to 5pm. But we were always asked to report before 9am and wind up our daily work not before 8pm,” said agitated members.
With shortage of vaccines, NMC does not have any work for them and so the decision has been taken to terminate their contracts, said an official from the health department.
“With most of us from other cities and towns, we have committed expenditures like room rent, school fees etc,” said nurses, and added that if NMC did not continue their service, they would not work at vaccination centres. The mayor assured to resolve their issues.