T.N. government to receive individual representations from 10,000 contract nurses on pay increase

The move follows a direction issued by Justices S. Vaidyanathan and P.T. Asha of the Madras High Court to consider their plea on a case-to-case basis after assessing their work against that of regular nurses

The Tamil Nadu government has instructed the Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services to call for individual representations from around 10,000 contract nurses serving in government hospitals across the State to assess whether they are performing work equivalent to regular nurses, and are therefore, eligible for equal pay.

The instructions have been issued pursuant to interim directions issued by Justices S. Vaidyanathan and P.T. Asha of the Madras High Court on a contempt of court petition filed by the Medical Recruitment Board Nurses Empowerment Association in 2019, against then Health Secretary Beela Rajesh for having disobeyed orders passed in 2018.

On perusing the 2018 orders, the Division Bench was of the view that the government ought to have considered the grievances of contract nurses on a case-to-case basis as directed by the court. They directed the government to obtain written representations from individual contract nurses and take a call after due consideration.

The government was granted a month’s time to complete the exercise and file a report before the court on January 4, 2023. Accordingly, the incumbent Health Secretary P. Senthilkumar had written to the DMS to call for individual written representations from the contract nurses and for the submission of a report to the Core Committee by December 11.

Following the Health Secretary’s instructions, DMS V.P. Hari Sundari had sent a communication to all Joint Directors of Medical and Rural Health Services in the State asking them to solicit written representations from the contract nurses along with documents to prove that they were performing work equivalent to regular nurses.

It had, however, been clarified that the High Court itself had ordered that neither the contract nurses nor their associations be afforded an opportunity of personal hearing and that it was sufficient if individual written representations were considered on the basis of documents and comparative charts.