Daily Times

KARACHI: Hundreds of nurses from various hospitals of the province have announced a strike and are protesting for the acceptance of their 10-point demand agenda outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC).

According to the protestors, the Sindh government has been ignoring them. Ghulam Dastagir, a member of the Nursing Action Committee (NAC) said, “we presented our demands to officials of the health department but they paid no heed to us.” Afshan Nazli, another nurse, said that the nurses had presented ten demands to the Health department and Sindh chief minister (CM) and requested them to implement them but there had been no response from the authorities.

On Tuesday, Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) parliamentarian Nusrat Bano Sehar Abbasi visited the protestors and talked to them. Assuring the protestors of her support, she said “I will call a meeting in 40 days to address your issues.” The member of provincial assembly (MPA) criticised the Sindh government and said that medical staff was protesting every other day. “Its unfortunate that the Sindh government has failed to appoint a sincere and reliable health minister,” said Abbasi.

A day before this, Firdous Naqvi also visited the protest camp. He said that the nursing staff’s demands were ‘legitimate’. He criticised the Sindh government for ignoring the nurse’s demands and said that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) would raise its voice in the assembly on the issue.

On Monday, Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho said that the government would accept ‘some of the legitimate demands’ of the protesting nurses.

Published in Daily Times, October 24^th 2018.