Nurses at LRH boycott duties, stage rally

PESHAWAR: All the nurses of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s oldest and largest health facility, Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), on Friday boycotted their duties and staged a protest demonstration for their rights.

This has happened for the first time that the nursing staff have refused to serve patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Gynea wards. This caused suffering to patients in the ICU and Gynae departments, as the hospital board has developed a protocol where one nurse is deputed to look after two patients in the ICU.

The protesting nurses took out a protest demonstration and raised slogans in support of their demands.

They demanded share in the revenue collected from patients treated on Sehat Sahulat Card in the hospital.

The protesters were upset with the LRH administration for taking disciplinary action against some nurses.

According to the nursing staff representatives, despite the fact that they were providing nonstop services to patients, none of the governments had ever recognised their contributions and given them the credit they deserved. The LRH administration said that as per direction of the Board of Governors (BoG), a long-standing residential problem of the nurses had been resolved and they were given accommodation in the hostels of the hospital.

The BoG had fixed Rs10,000 per room per month in the nursing hostel and mostly three or more nurses are living in one room, and each one is paying Rs3000 per month, excluding electricity charges.

“In LRH, the salary package for nursing staff is between Rs60,000 to Rs160,000 and paying Rs3000 for accommodation in the hostel is not a big amount,” Mohammad Asim, media manager of the hospital said.

He said the hospital administration had utilised all options to discuss issues faced by the nursing staff and find an amicable solution to their problems. He, however, claimed that some outsiders were involved and they wanted to create issues in the hospital.