Chennai: Government nurses working under Director of Medical Services (DMS) remain agitated over various issues related to transfer counselling, minimum wages and confirmation of contract relating to the extension of services. Transfer counselling is an issue of confusion among nurses due to non-transparency in the system, and nurses staged a protest with regard to the same last year also. The nurses allege that they were not informed about the number of vacancies as there is no public portal or a website to inform on counselling.
“It is difficult for us to attend counselling at a short notice because some of us have to travel from Madurai, Tiruchy and other far off places. If we are denied transfers due to lack of vacancies, the number of vacancies should be informed prior. We raised the same issue last year also, but authorities did not make any arrangements to resolve the problem,” said R. Chitra, a nurse from Thoothukudi.
She added that even though mutual transfers are allowed, it is not being practised properly by the DMS. This has been a long-pending woe of the government hospital nurses, but authorities have not acted upon the request, said Dr G.R. Ravindranath, convener, Doctors’ Association for Social Equality.
The Nurses’ Joint Action Committee had put forward its demand in support of the implementation of universal minimum wages for nurses in all the hospitals in the State in August, but nurses complain of insufficient pay.
“We should be paid a mi-nimum wage of Rs 20,000 at a hospital with less than 50 beds, while hospitals with less than 200 beds should pay a wage of Rs 34,800 to nurses along with similar allowances as private hospital nurses. But our demands have never been considered by the authorities,” said N. Lekha, a member of Nurses’ Joint Action Committee.
When contacted senior officials at DMS, officials said that the issues related to transfer counselling and confirmation of services will be discussed on Wednesday. However, transfer counselling has been conducted as per the regulations and issues related to regular counselling can be discussed.
