Male and female nursing staff in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa rejected the new service rules announced recently by the provincial government and urged the government to review them in the best interest of the health sector.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, All District Nurses Association Khyber Pakhtunkhwa President Furrukh Jalil said the provincial government had recently issued service rules through a notification on May 12, without proper consultations with nurses and other relevant stakeholders, which created great unrest among the nursing staff across the province.
According to the service rules, he said high qualification was made a pre-requisite to upgrade charge nurses to head nurse, equivalent to grade BPS-17. He said a nurse was promoted to grade-17 as a head nurse under the previous rules, but now the new rules would block the promotion of nurses that spent over three-decade in service.
“We want to resolve the issue on a priority basis. We understand that education is important, but the seniority should not be underestimated,” Furrukh said.
Furrukh also raised the issue of students’ scholarship and said that in Punjab, student nurses were offered Rs 22,000 per scholarship, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nursing students only get Rs 5000 under the student scholarship program and it should be increased.
About the special compensatory allowance, he said government had promised to give compensatory allowance to 16 to 17 grade officers, but the allowance was deducted again from the nursing community.
He further asked to give allowance to nurses like the ones given to the doctors. He also called for immediate approval and implementation of service structure for the nursing community.