UNEMPLOYED nursing graduates who remained without a job for the last six years since the government stopped new recruitment demonstrated at capital’s Shahbagh Intersection on Wednesday protesting few vacancies the government has offered now for recruitment. What appears quite outrageous is that police battoned and sprayed water cannons on the nurses to disperse them instead of allowing them to hold peaceful demonstration and disperse. It is natural they were waiting over so many years and when the government made new circular recently for appointment, they specified it for 3,616 senior nurses. The number is just a small segment of the total nurses waiting for jobs and that forced them to take to the streets to highlight their plight.
It is a shame and a total disgrace that the police action caused injuries to at least 40 nurses who are rather campaigning for the jobs to nurse the patients. Needless to say why police excesses are only rising on unarmed civilians despite media outcry and protest from all walks of life demanding restraint on brutal police bahaviour. We know that the higher police administration is not unmindful of police excesses and trying its best to reign in it by all means. But the sad thing is that police are still shooting and beating people at will tarnishing the image of the law enforcers. It is few errant policemen but the entire force is taking the blame. We believe that brutalities to protesting nurses must not lose sight of the authorities to stop recurrence of such unruly action on unarmed male and female population.
As it appears after six years of a virtual embargo on recruitment of nurses, the Health Ministry has finally mooted out a proposal for appointment of senior staff nurses against an equal number of vacant posts in public hospitals. Though this recruitment of nurses based on seniority and merit is a right step but bigger number of aspirants made the situation worse. Now around 12,000 nurses are serving at over 550 public hospitals and health complexes and observers believe that the room for recruiting several thousands more is there to overcome nurse shortfall in public hospitals. It is not that the government has not enough funds, but the problem is in prioritizing the expenditure.
It is true that private hospitals and clinics also recruit nurses but they are highly exploitative except few big hospitals. Moreover several private hospitals have also set up nursing colleges producing graduates along with government run colleges and nursing institutes. They are producing around a thousand nursing graduates per year but the government being the biggest employer has left the door shut over the past years.
In our view the government must recruit more nurses, it is a sensible investment in health services when the health sector is misusing public money in manifold corruptions and such other unaccounted expenditures.
