Eight protesting NICH employees arrested

Karachi
Eight employees of the National Institute of Child Health were arrested by the Saddar police on Saturday in two cases lodged against them by the hospital’s administration for allegedly disrupting health services there.
Services resumed at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and the NICH after two days of protest by their employees.
Shahid Iqbal, Zaryab Tiwana, Aijaz Kaleri, Rafiq Siyal and four other protesting employees were arrested for forcibly closing the departments at the NICH and the JPMC.
The employees protested against the non-payment of their health allowances for three days and on Friday most of them returned to work after the health department assured them that efforts would be made for addressing their issues.
Some NICH employees, however, tried to continue the strike at NICH and JPMC and after failing to convince the employees of the JPMC to join them, they forcibly tried to shut down the departments of the NICH, following which the administration filed atwo cases against them.
Saddar SHO Pir Shabbir Haider said police were summoned by NICH director Dr Jamal Raza to arrest the eight employees who were harassing the administration staff and other employees at the hospital.
He said on the complaint of Dr Raza, they had registered two FIRs against the eight men.
Dr Raza said he had personally taken the protesting employees to the health secretary where they were assured that that all their problems would be sorted out.
However, some of them were unwilling to cooperate, compelling him to lodge cases against them.
Additional deputy commissioner South Muhammad Khan Rind, who was also present at the hospital at the time the employees were arrested, said these protesters were asked not to disrupt health services as the authorities were ready to listen to their demands, but they did not pay any heed to their advice.