ANMs Protest in Punjab Demanding Regularisation

The National Health Mission (NHM) has been in shambles in the recent years, with the focus of the government shifting away from primary healthcare delivery by public facilities towards tertiary care through private facilities. The allocation for NHM as a proportion of total health spending has been continuously declining since 2017. Most of the workers employed under NHM have been working in contractual settings.

Auxillary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) from Amritsar began their protest outside the Civil Surgeon’s office in the city on Thursday, August 29, under the banner of NHM Multipurpose Health Workers’ Union. The union has said that they will continue their protest till September 4. The protesters are demanding regularisation of their jobs. The 135 protesters had been employed under the NHM 14 years ago.

Talking to NewsClick, one of the protesters said, “The government took a decision to regularise our services on February 2, 2014. We have been trying to do everything we can to implement the decision. They have postponed our meeting with the health minister thrice. This time, we have been asked to attend a meeting on September 5, so we will continue our protest till September 4.”

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She also added that their salary was a meagre amount of Rs 13,000 per month, and the salaries of the protesting ANMs have not been disbursed since June. She said, “From June 28, we stopped filing the monthly reports, but we have not stopped working. All the reports are ready, but if the government wants them, our services have to be regularised. This is the only way we could show our protest over a long period.”

This is not just the state in Amritsar. In the last few years, employees of NHM have been forced to protest again and again, demanding regularisation and hike in salaries. Earlier this month, NHM employees from Chandigarh went on a strike for week starting August 19, alleging that they were being pressured to resign and then join as outsourced employees. They also demanded a hike in their salary, and regularisation of contractual workers. 

On August 5, ANMs from across Andhra Pradesh staged a protest, ‘Chalo Vijaywada’, demanding that the government regularise their services in village and ward secretariats. The government in  July issued a notification for 13,450 ANMs/health assistant posts in village secretariats across the state. The contractual workers who have been working as ANMs for a long time protested against this notification, demanding that the government regularise their service instead of recruiting new workers.

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In Jharkhand, around 4,000 contractual ANMs and General Nurse Midwives (GNMs) went on a hunger strike starting from June 24, demanding regularisation of their jobs. During the hunger strike that lasted more than two weeks, the workers sat on a dharna in front of the Raj Bhavan, but the governor refused to meet them.

These are only some instances. NHM workers from Bihar, West Bengal, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and several other states have protested demanding regularisation in recent years, as the Mission continues to struggle with lack of infrastructure and manpower. A major number of posts in sub centres, Primary Health Centres, and Community Health Centres (CHCs) remain vacant.

According to Rural Health Statistics (RHS) 2018, 24,760 posts of ANMs remain vacant across the country. In case of male health workers, there is a shortfall of 1,04,318 workers. The shortfall for male health assistants and female health assistants are 16,981 and 10,557 respectively.