WITH PGI nurses set to go on mass casual leave on Friday, PGI has asked the general public to visit the institute if it is an “extreme emergency”. The administration has also decided to curtail the OPD registration timing, and has cancelled the planned and routine surgeries.
The institute issued an appeal asking the nurses not to go on strike. However, the PGI Nurses Welfare Association said that they would go ahead with the one-day strike even as the nurses at AIIMS in New Delhi called off the strike. A call for the strike was given by the All India Nurses Federation against the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission.
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PGI Nurses Association president Lakhwinder Singh said that they would continue with the strike on Friday. “We are forced to take this step. We have been requesting the Centre to resolve our issues, but our demands have not been resolved,” he said. “PGI administration is also not accepting the demand of the association to frame the 6-hour duty roster for the newly recruited nurses at the institute.”
Singh said that more 2,000 nurses of PGI would join the strike.
A PGI statement said that nurses of PGI along with 36 other similar institutes have served a notice to go on one-day strike from 8 am on Friday to 8 am on Saturday. “In view of this strike, the institute has decided to curtail the OPD registration timings, cancel the planned and routine surgeries. However, emergency services including emergency surgeries will be performed within the resources available as per the contingency plan circulated,” said the statement.
The statement added that the PGI had asked the Punjab and Haryana health authorities and the city government hospitals “not to refer the patients and also to augment their services to take care of likely increased number of emergency patients including surgery”.
“An appeal is being made to the public at large that they may postpone their visit to the PGI OPD and emergency unless it is an extreme emergency,” the statement added.
A senior PGI official told Chandigarh Newsline the institute would deploy more than 450 students of Nursing Institute of Nursing Education (NINE) Institute at PGI. “Senior staff nurses from NINE would be deployed in the ICUs and emergencies and junior staff would be deputed in wards,” the official added.
The official said that they had already informed the UT Police about the situation and the PGI had stepped up the security within the campus.
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