Nurses boycott night duty

Parmar said that more then 35 per cent of operations that were scheduled for yesterday were cancelled because of the mass casual leave taken by the nursing staff for two days, viz, June 11 and June 12. Interns and resident doctors had been directed to stand in for nursing staff to take care of the patients admitted to the various wards in the 1,000-bed Government Rajindra Hospital.

Contingency plans were being prepared to meet the situation from tomorrow onwards. He clarified that it would not be possible to accommodate and put on duty the entire nursing staff on morning duty; only those whose name figured on the morning duty roster would be allowed to do morning duty, the rest would be sent back.

The medical superintendent said that those not reporting for duty on evening and night shifts would be treated as absent from duty and the department would be free to take action against them.

Sources in the health department say that medical services in the rural areas where many health institutions like health sub-centres are manned by nursing staff are bound to be hard hit because of the agitation.

The Punjab Nurses Association, which has been spearheading the agitation, had threatened that it would intensify its agitation if the government did not quickly accept its demands. The association8217;s demands include stopping the recovery of arrears of revised pay scales already paid to nursing staff, payment of night shift allowance, and more facilities for nursing students. The association has even threatened to boycott the Lok Sabha elections if the government does not immediately accept their demands.

AMRITSAR: The nursing staff of Guru Nanak Hospital, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and Civil Hospital today held a massive rally in protest against the non-fulfilllment of their demands by the Punjab government.

Gurcharan Kaur, state general secretary of the Punjab Nurses Association, said that staff nurses had stopped doing night and evening shifts. But emergency duties at night were being attended. She said the two-day mass casual leave on June 11 and 12 had got cent per cent response from the nurses. She demanded that the nursing staff8217;s pay scale of Rs 5,800 to Rs 9,600, as given by the Pay Commission, be restored.

Harpreet Kaur, district convenor of the association, Usha Chopra district president, and Avinash Sareen also addressed the rally and threatened to intensify the agitation if their demands were not accepted.