New Delhi: More than 10,000 All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) nurses from across India will soon go for a nationwide indefinite strike accusing Union Health Ministry of not listening to their concerns.
Taking to ETV Bharat, Harish Kumar Kajla, President of AIIMS nurse union said that the union health ministry has not yet kept its promise in implementing various measures to mitigate the concern of the nurses.
"It's almost one year, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has assured to implementing various measures to solve our problem. But till now, nothing has been implemented," said Kajla.
"To start with, Nurses in AIIMS Delhi will begin the strike and subsequently we will bring together nurses of all AIIMS campus across India as well as non-AIIMS nurses of central government hospitals," he said.
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The Nurse union has been demanding EHS reform, 6 cell increment, special area allowance among others.
"On Tuesday we had our executive meeting and we decided to up the ante by all means including indefinite strike due to the extreme callous attitude of the health ministry in fulfilling the promise," Kajla said.
Ironically, the Nurses union has decided to call the strike at a time when India has been fighting against COVID-19 pandemic.
He said that the central government had accepted their demands on principle "but those are yet to be implemented and the current pandemic has worsened our situation."
"The onus is not only on nurses, in fact, the Health Ministry will also be responsible for the chaos," said Kajla.
At present, there are 15 AIIMS campuses across India including AIIMS Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Raipur among others.
"Putting our life at risk, we are serving both COVID and non-COVID patients but the central government is not at all sincere to solve our issues," said Kajla.
It may be mentioned here that in June last, the Trained Nurse Association of India has also joined the AIIMS nurses union during a protest programme demanding amenities for the nurses.
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