Service delivery staff of the National Health Mission (NHM) have decided to go on an indefinite strike and cease work from Wednesday in protest against the process of rationalisation of remuneration within the organisation.
Rationalisation was necessary because staff with similar qualifications and years of service were drawing different amounts of remuneration. This can be attributed to the merger and dissolution of various vertical programmes societies in the health sector since 2016.
However, service delivery staff are unhappy with the manner in which the rationalisation has been carried out, arguing that it is unfair for the programme management staff to have had their salaries rationalised quicker than those of the SD staff. NHM has argued that there are only some 300-odd PM staff but nearly 2,000 SD staff.
They also claim that it is unfair that SD staff remuneration will still be tied to qualifications as well as experience; such categorisation does not exist for PM staff. The draft rationalisation also disappointed SD staff because there is no mention of seniority, procedure of promotion if any, etc.
Terming the meeting with the Mission Director after a peaceful rally today at Malki Ground as fruitless, the staff said that the MD gave no assurances or solutions to their concerns.
They announced that the strike will apply to the whole state of Meghalaya from July 6 until the demands are met.
