Chandigarh health department to replace 178 terminated NHM employees

The UT health department on Saturday conducted an emergency meeting of the executive committee of the National Health Mission (NHM) under the chairmanship of Yashpal Garg, UT health secretary, and decided that the health department will soon hire new healthcare staff to fill posts of 178 terminated employees

The UT health department on Saturday conducted an emergency meeting of the executive committee of the National Health Mission (NHM) under the chairmanship of Yashpal Garg, UT health secretary, and decided that the health department will soon hire new healthcare staff to fill posts of 178 terminated employees.

The Chandigarh health department had issued termination letters to 178 contractual NHM employees after they missed their duties on October 27 to protest against the revised working conditions offered against salary hike. (HT file)

The department had issued termination letters to 178 contractual NHM employees after they missed their duties on October 27 to protest against the revised working conditions offered against salary hike.

“Under the given circumstances and gross misconduct, the mission director took the appropriate decision to terminate services of the 178 NHM staff and the same was ratified. For stop-gap arrangements, staff may be hired from an outsourcing agency for a short period. However, the department need not to mechanically hire fresh staff against the vacancies created under each category because of the termination of contractual appointments. The actual requirement will be ascertained after an exercise of rationalisation and thereafter, due process is to be followed as per NHM guidelines for fresh selection of staff. It must be ensured that the persons whose contractual appointment has been terminated because of misconduct are not considered in the fresh selection process”, said Garg.

“The aspect of pay to NHM staff as per the DC rate needs to be re-examined carefully after getting status from other UTs, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Till then, the guidelines issued by the central government for service conditions including pay to the NHM staff to be strictly followed”, he added. Meanwhile, NHM employees, who have been terminated, continued their protest outside GMSH-16 for the third consecutive days.