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| A deserted Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in Imphal East after the OPD was closed. A Telegraph picture |
Imphal, Feb. 25 : Striking Manipur employees today disrupted the functioning of government hospitals across the state over pay hike.
More than 60,000 employees, under the banner of Joint Administrative Council, shut the outpatient departments for an indefinite period from today. Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, the largest government-run hospital in Imphal East district, was also brought under the purview of the strike.
The employees, who have been halting work in government offices for more than a month, decided to shut the OPDs after chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh failed to respond positively to their demand for implementation of the enhanced pay recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission in toto.
The Ibobi Singh government has been maintaining that his government can implement the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations from April this year but does not have enough money to pay salaries from January 2006.
“The state will go bankrupt if the salaries are paid from 2006,” the chief minister had said after the employees started a ceasework on January 16.
“We have shut down the outpatients departments in all government hospitals across the state indefinitely from today. If the government remains indifferent to our demand, we will vacate all the patients admitted in government hospitals from March 2. We have also decided to shut down the casualty departments of the government hospitals from March 5,” L. Priyobrata Singh, a spokesman for the council, an apex body of the employees’ unions of various state government departments, said.
As the employees shut the OPD at the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, patients headed for the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in the city. The RIMS comes under the Union health ministry.
A source in RIMS said doctors and nurses had a tough time accommodating all the patients who turned up at the institute’s OPD.
“Why should the people be made to suffer because of a disagreement between the employees and the government? The government should do something and reopen the OPDs,” Manisang Devi, a resident of Imphal East, said on finding the OPD at Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital shut.
The employees, however, refused to call off the strike until the government conceded to their demand.