LOCAL NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Striking nurses unrelenting Talks to end stir inconclusive

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Kathmandu, April 28: Talks between the high level talks committee formed by the Ministry of Health and the representatives of nurses of the Bir Hospital remained inconclusive today.

The Ministry had formed a four-member special committee consisting of two special secretaries at the Ministry Dr. Somnath Acharya and Ms. Bijaya K.C., joint secretary at the Ministry Rebati Raj Kafley and chief accounting officer of the Ministry to hold talks with the nurses on the latter’s demand. The nurses had gone for a complete strike from Friday.

Meanwhile according to a report, the officials and the Director of the Hospital Dr. Ram Prasad Shrestha were locked up inside the hospital saying they would not be allowed to come out until a way out is found. The nurses are keeping a stage-in at the hospital.

With more than 200 nurses continuing with their strike for the second day today, all services, except emergency, at Bir Hospital has come to a standstill. The hospital has stopped admitting patients and doctors themselves are trying to run the emergency service doing everything from checking pulses, giving injections and even dressing the wounds.

An on-duty doctor told The Rising Nepal that they are doing only emergency management and sending the patients to other hospitals.

From 3 to 6 in the afternoon 15 patients were referred and sent to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital and the Patan Hospital. The ambulance of the hospital was also busy taking the patients to other hospitals.

"For serious cases, we stabilize the condition and refer them to other hospitals," he said. The emergency section of the hospital is also facing severe shortage of basic things like sterilization of equipment.

However, talks between the representatives of the striking nurses and the Ministry of Health started today at about 12:30 P.M. between the representatives of nurse and the Ministry.

The nurses said the hospital management was not involved in the talks saying that the hospital management and the Ministry are the same. The talk was still going on till late in the evening.

The nurses sound determined to get their demands fulfilled. One of them, Durga Shrestha who is the in-charge of the Haemodialysis section, said they are willing to fight till the end. "We would prefer to quit the job if our two major demands of night allowance of Rs. 125 per night and a health hazard allowance of 50 per cent of the salary are not met," she said. They are presently getting Rs. 20 per night as night allowance.

The whole problem cropped up after the government increased the salary and cut down all other allowances.

The major grudge of the nurses is that while the other staff in the hospital like in the radiology and lab departments continue getting such allowances, they are the only ones who are devoid of the facility. "Even doctors are getting the night allowance of Rs. 250 for every night they are on duty," one of the nurses said. "Why do they get and we don’t?" nurses asked. They said the others got the allowances because they went strongly to the management and the hospital management has always taken us lightly.

"The hospital management neither say our demands are illogical nor they are irrelevant or there is a budgetary constraint, but always say they need more time to study on our demands," Shrestha said.

This time, too, they had given a 10-day ultimatum before the strike. "When the management did not make any decision we went for a two-hour token strike on Wednesday and a five-hour strike on Thursday and on Friday then we went for total strike," Shrestha said.

While the nurses have said that they are even willing to provide their services in case of emergency and if the doctors call them, but this has not happened, others said. The nurses say the death of three patients in the hospital on Friday was merely a coincidence and not because of their strike.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Bir Hospital Development Committee Dr. Sudeep Kumar Bhattacharya resigned on Friday and on the same day the board of the hospital met and made some decision regarding the nurses’ demands. A statement signed by Dr. Ram Prasad Shrestha said the nurses would get Rs. 100 as night allowance and an extra duty allowance according to their salary and 12.5 per cent incentive to all the employees of the hospital. But the nurses say the decision was illegal as the statement was not formally brought out and also it was made by the meeting chaired by the chairman who has already resigned. Now, the nurses say they want a concrete and just solution to their demands to make them return to work.

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