<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When the National Health Mission Employees Association Nagaland (NEAN) threw the dice on the table and launched an indefinite cease work in response to the cabinet decision which “empowered” the Department of Health & Family Welfare (DoHFW) to have a free hand to appoint scores of doctors on contractual and controversial “one time basis, it also exposed the grave misstep in the entire process. The appointments were not the main issue but the manner in which established rules and procedures were tossed aside under the pretext of acute shortage of doctors during the current pandemic. The decision to appoint several doctors as class –I gazetted officers under contingency and that too regularising the services even when some had not even submitted their joining reports had caused a huge uproar. The government took the stand in defence, that the service rules and conditions between NHM employees and those under the state DoHFW were totally different. True, NHM employees are on contractual basis and paid through the central NHM scheme. Since they have been appointed on contractual basis, the NHM employees do not enjoy pay parity with state employees under DoHFW nor other benefits etc. Though this is a fact, yet when the DoHFW regularised the services of contractual employees, it seemed grossly unfair and unjust. Most NHM employees that included doctors of various fields, nurses, technicians have been rendering more than ten years service to the state. It was understandable that the stand of the NHM employees- equal pay for equal work- was based on the same kind of work done by them in comparison with those under DoHFW. Perhaps, NEAN would not have agitated but for the fact that the appointment brought only disappointment. It is now a matter of debate as to what was going on in the minds of decision makers in allowing the controversial regularisation clause to prevail. The Nagaland Junior Doctors Association(NJDA) and the Nagaland Medical Students Association(NMSA) have also taken up the issue and demanded revocation of the cabinet decision on the issue of appointment without NPSC and regularisation without rule. The NJDA has also pointed out that there has been some misconception that the 27 posts of Medical Officers were not created for the pandemic but were existing sanctioned post vacancies. It has described as “unethical” the regularisation of the 27 posts of MOs and also to re-advertise them for open and fair recruitment. It has also demanded that all the 36 MO posts advertised as contingency should be withheld till due diligence and consensus is arrived at. The NMSA has claimed that there are more than enough qualified doctors who can be employed and if so then there is need to create enough posts and have it advertised to meet the present shortage for the pandemic. Another issue that NJDA has raised was on the Foreign Medical Graduates (FMG) who have to clear the Medical Council of India eligibility test before being eligible to practise. This is a logical demand which the state also needs to apply its mind, if there is inclination to ensure transparency and accountability. It these began after the NEAN agitation and hopefully, better sense would prevail instead of resorting to whims and fancies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Correcting the drift<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}