Nurses reject new service rules

PESHAWAR: The male and female nursing staff in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday rejected the new service rules recently announced by the provincial government and demanded amendments to the regulations.

Speaking at a press conference, All District Nurses Association Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial president Farrukh Jalil said the government issued service rules through a notification on May 12 without proper consultations with nurses and other stakeholders, which had created unrest among them.  

According to the service rules, she said, higher qualification had been made a prerequisite to promote a charge nurse to the rank of a head nurse. She said a nurse was promoted to grade-17 as head nurse under previous rules, adding, the new rules would block the way of promotion of nurses.

“We want to resolve the issue. We understand that education is very important, but seniority should not be ignored,” Farrukh Jalil said. She claimed that the steps were taken by those who were promoting their vested interests. She vowed to expose the black sheep in the nursing community. 

Farrukh Jalil said that a lot of work was done the on service rules 2011, which should be passed and implemented across the province.Flanked by the association office-bearers, Farrukh also raised the issue of student scholarship and said that in Punjab student nurses were offered Rs22,000 per scholarship, but a nurse student  in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa got only Rs5,000 under student scholarship programme.

About the special compensatory allowance, she said the government had promised to give compensatory allowance to grade 16-17 officers, but the decision was not implemented. Regarding the health professional allowance, she said that doctors availed Rs60,000 to Rs140,000 as health professional allowance. She asked the government to extend professional allowance to nurses too as under the rules they were entitled to it.