32,000 contractual health workers in M.P. on indefinite strike even as COVID threat looms

State Health Minister Prabhuram Choudhary has appealed to the protesters to call off the strike and has promised to look into their demands

Madhya Pradesh— that joined the rest of the country in assessing its preparedness to deal with COVID-19 on Tuesday— is staring at a manpower crisis in health services delivery. As many as 32,000 contractual health workers, who played a crucial role during the earlier Corona waves, are on an indefinite strike since December 15.

The strike— with regularisation as the key demand— has entered its third week and is spread across all 52 districts. This has adversely affected health services in several areas and their absence from work may prove to be a critical gap, if the State has to manage a spurt in the COVID cases.

There are 69 cadres of these contractual health workers, from consultant doctors to ground-level support staff, who are on strike. The impact is more severe in the remote areas as 85% of the health and wellness centres— the smallest, last-mile unit of health care in the State – are manned by the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANMs) and the Community Health Officers who have been hired on a contractual basis, says Virendra Uprale, the spokesperson of the contractual health workers union in Madhya Pradesh.

In the last 13 days, apart from staging protests, the contractual health workers had adopted various creative ways to draw attention to their cause. These included eating hay to sweeping the floor in front of the local MLAs, and also taking out the funeral procession of an effigy titled samvida, the Hindi word for contractual. On Saturday, some of the protesters tried to gherao the State Health Minister Prabhuram Choudhary. In the process, 10 of the protesters were arrested and tied with ropes— an action that the health workers described as “humiliating” and one which had further infuriated them.

“We were demanding that all the 32,000 health workers be regularised and those whose services have been terminated or jobs been outsourced, be also brought back to the health department’s fold and given permanent jobs. Now, we are also demanding that the charges against those arrested for gheraoing the Minister be dropped,” said Mr. Uprale.

He added that there had been nine rounds of discussions between the protesters and various officials but so far no progress had been made.

Meanwhile, Mr. Choudhary appealed to the protesting health workers to call off the strike.