Editor,
Through your esteemed daily, I would like to submit the following before the chief minister:
First of all, we would like to congratulate you for your achievements in fighting Covid-19 so far, which was impossible in the absence of availed leadership, as in the beginning the health system of our state was not in the position to face the pandemic; but in such a short period of time we are in the position to identify, treat and control the Covid-19 cases, which is highly appreciable.
I am writing this letter with great pain on behalf of all the contractual health workers under the National Health Mission (NHM) and vertical programmes. Since we are exhausted with all the possible alternatives to reach the government to get fulfilled our genuine demand, we are bound to reach you through the columns of this daily to place our grievances for your kind consideration.
As you are aware, the NHM was launched in the year 2005 to bring efficiency and effectiveness in the health services, covering the remotest parts of the state. To achieve such a mammoth task many young and energetic people were hired on contractual basis and you will be proud to know that the Arunachal Pradesh NHM team is fulfilling the desired goal since its inception by improving the indicators such as institutional delivery, child immunizations and reducing maternal and child deaths and overall morbidity condition of the state.
We appreciate the state government for regularizing the contractual technical staffers such as doctors and nurses, etc, from the NHM in a time-bound manner, but at the same time highly qualified non-technical staffers under the same umbrella, such as state consultants, district programme managers, district account managers, district community mobilizers and BPMSU staffers who are the backbone of the health department are being ignored from the very beginning in the form of no assurance of job regularization, meagre salaries and no job security.
It is also important to bring before your kind knowledge that some of our NHM colleagues who died while serving the department left their families with no security as their is no such provision for contractual employees.
To summarize, our grievances are placed below:
1) Regularization by absorbing non-technical staffs of NHM under the state health department.
2) Revise in the salary and accordingly enhancement in the salary, which is not done since 2005.
3) Job security as per the provision entitled for state government staffs.
Many promises were made and forgotten in this regard by the competent authorities, but we are still keeping our hope alive and serving the society in the best way. We are always expected and entrusted to perform all the duties in such an unsuitable condition and we haven’t refused ever. In fact, we are contributing to the department at par with the regular employees. Then why such discrimination still exist? We are being paid below Group D employees and expected to perform the role of officers, but still we have to obey as many of us have crossed the age bar to apply for other jobs.
You will be proud to know that during this pandemic, we the contractual employees of NHM are also performing the duty of Covid warriors in all the capacities in addition to our normal responsibilities in all the districts.
We have brought all these facts before you because we have faith in your visionary, young and dynamic leadership and believe that you will recognize the contribution and value of NHM employees in the health department and bring justice at the earliest.
A deprived NHM non-technical contractual employee