Beleaguered Foot Soldiers

National Health Mission workers are up in arms, demanding salary and perks at par with the government's regular staff.

- Banjot Kaur

IN 2007, when Bimla Kumari from Bihar’s Amba Kala (north) village in Piprahi block joined the National Health Mission (NHM) as an auxiliary nurse midwife (ANMS), or village-level trained health worker, on a contract basis she was determined to make the government’s “health for all” vision a reality. But a decade later, her enthusiasm has lost steam. In December 2017, she joined the state’s 16,000 NHM workers, including staff nurses, lab assistants, operation theatre technicians, pharmacists, radiographers and other peripheral health workers, who staged a week-long strike, bringing the health machinery to a halt. Her demand was regularisation of job and salary at par with the government workforce.

“Just like state cadre ANMS, I ensure primary healthcare to all the 8,000 families in my village. Every day, I walk on foot to the houses of pregnant women to ensure their well-being, counsel people on family planning and conduct routine immunisation, apart from a host of other activities, such as providing first-aid care,” she says. “But I get a meagre Ì€ 12,500 a month, while ANMS on government service receive Ì€ 40,000,” adds Kumari, who could not celebrate the New Year’s day with her family as she had to accompany an expectant mother to the hospital at the block headquarters. “Besides, I have not received salary for the past five months,” says an aggrieved Kumari.

While Kumari and other NHM workers withdrew the strike after the state government assured that a committee would be formed to look into their demands, not many are hopeful, and for a reason.