Nurses in Maharashtra Govt hospitals go on strike, medical services likely to be hit for next two days

New Delhi: The medical services in the Maharashtra government hospitals are likely to be hit as nurses on Wednesday (June 23, 2021) have gone on a 48-hour long strike.

The nurses are protesting over various pending demands including promotion and COVID-19 allowance.

“Nurses from 24 districts including 1,300 nurses of Mumbai’s JJ Hospital are participating. If our demands aren’t met, then we’ll go for an indefinite strike,” President, Maharashtra Nurses Association told ANI.

This comes almost a week after a group of protesting healthcare workers including nurses had tried to stop the convoy of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to present him their demands including permanent employment.

The protesters, notably, were hired on a contractual basis at government hospitals due to the COVID-19 outbreak and some of them had also lost their jobs after the contract expired.

Pawar, along with District Guardian Minister Dhananjay Munde, State Health Minister Rajesh Tope and local MLAs were attending a review meeting on the COVID-19 situation at a Beed Collector’s office.

The strike also comes amid state reporting 21 cases of the Delta Plus variant, which has been labelled as the ‘Variant of Concern’ by the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday.

It is considered highly infectious and has been so far found in the following Maharashtra districts — nine in Ratnagiri, seven in Jalgaon, two in Mumbai, and one case each in Palghar, Thane and Sindhudurg districts.

This is to be noted that Maharashtra is the worst coronavirus-hit state in India with over 59,87,521 confirmed cases and 1,18,795 deaths. The state recorded 8,470 new infections on Tuesday besides 188 fatalities. Maharashtra currently has 1,23,340 active COVID-19 cases. 

(With inputs from agencies)
 

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