Haryana set to renew contracts of health staff hired for Covid duty

GURUGRAM: The Haryana government on Wednesday told all districts that they can rehire the health workers who were originally employed in 2020 to augment pandemic response but whose contracts were not renewed in March earlier this year.
All districts can now renew the services of the contractual workers according to their own requirement in Covid-19 management, the National Health Mission office in Haryana said in the direction to all districts.
“The staff to be hired should not increase the limit of the earlier sanctioned manpower to a district in FY 2021-22 under Covid-19. Only the staff to be hired who were relieved on March 31 under Covid-19. Further, it should be ensured that any employees who left the service voluntarily or were terminated from the service during the period of Covid or before March 31 should not be hired. A person holding the post earlier under Covid-19 i.e. before March 31, the same person should be hired under the same post,” the order said. The districts have been asked to submit a compliance report within a week.
For the past week, Haryana has been adding around 200 daily cases with test-positivity rate around 1.4%. The previous spurt in daily cases was in April and the previous wave of infections in January earlier this year.
Around 1,100 employees — including doctors, entry operators, drivers, health inspectors, microbiologists, lab technicians and Auxiliary Nursing Midwife (ANMs) — had been hired by the state under NHM to scale up its Covid work force. In March this year, their contracts were not renewed as the pandemic showed signs of ebbing for the time. This included 154 health care employees in Gurugram as well.
The workers, who had been involved in managing the state’s response to the pandemic for two years, had also protested this move and demanded that they be reinstated.
“As the pandemic is still not over, Haryana has decided to renew the contracts of the temporary staff,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurugram . The city administration will work out how many employees it needs to rehire on a contract.
Rohit Kumar, who was a data operator for Covid-19 cases and vaccination in the city, said on Wednesday he is bit relieved after the government’s order.
“It is very difficult to get a job as the entire industry is going through tough times. Losing a job was a setback. I am the only earning member in my family,” Kumar, a resident of Sector 5 in Gurugram , said. He was among the 154 whose contracts were not renewed and is currently working on a freelance project for a market research firm.