Tura, March 16: Service delivery staff of the National Health Mission (NHM) from the state under the aegis of the NHM Employees Association of Meghalaya (NEAM) on Wednesday warned of staging a statewide agitation over the long delay by concerned authorities to rationalize their salaries.
Informing of the difficulties faced by the staff, the association said that the Salary Rationalization of the service delivery staff which was supposed to be under effect from September 2021 as it was done for Programme Management staff of NHM, was still pending.
“When members of service delivery staff met with Mission Director Ram Kumar in November last year, he gave a verbal assurance that it will be done by January 2022. Again for the second time, we met him in February 2022, where he again assured verbally to get it done by MARCH/APRIL 2022. As that also did not happen we then met Health Minister James P K Sangma and received a written notification on February 27 stating that now the Salary Rationalization will only be done by end of May 2022. Along with the notification, it was informed that the previous arrears and yearly 5% increment have been dispersed which is totally false. The NHM staff have not received any arrears or increments since 2019,” the association revealed.
According to the association, an online meeting was held between the staff and the Mission Director on March 15 where they were assured that Salary Rationalization would be completed by July 2022. The association however claimed that when they raised the question on whether arrears would be given or not with effect from September 2021, the reply was negative.
“This is unacceptable. We strongly condemn the actions of the Mission Director who has been delaying the Salary Rationalization Process and giving us false hope time and again despite being given more than ample time for its processing. We are bound to stage statewide unprecedented agitations till our demands are met,” the association said.