Staff Reporter :
Urban Primary Health Care Services in the country are in the state of peril while salaries of 2800 workers have been pending for months together.
Those workers of the Urban Primary Health Care Services Delivery Project (UPHCSDP) who have not got salaries for last 12 months are thus living in inhuman conditions.
As such they cannot deliver prompt services to the patients. The project had been taken to deliver health care services for the urban poorer citizens which are now hampered severely.
“We are living in acute inhuman conditions as our salaries are not disbursed in last 12 months. In addition, if we talk to higher officials of the project about our pending salaries, they threat us to expel from the jobs,” said one of the health workers from an urban health care center in the capital preferring anonymity. He said, “At the end of every month, the house owner demands house rent. My children also face pressure from their schools and colleges to pay fees. But I am helpless. I cannot think what to do.”
All other health workers from different health care centers in Dhaka south and north city corporations said alike.
Many of them said, they have been evicted from their rented houses because of their pending house rents for more than 10 months.
Many of them left their rented houses where they were living. Now they have hired cheap houses though it is painful for them living with families especially with children. According to the project officials and the workers, the first phase of the UPHCSDP ended on March 2018. The second phase of the programme started in April 2018.
But with the starting of the second phase, the workers of projects have fallen in deep crisis for non-payment of their salaries. The 2800 workers of 150 health care centers include Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Centres (CRHCC-mother and child care unit), Primary Health Care Centers (PHCC) and Satellite Clinics in Dhaka’s two city corporation and the other city corporations and 13 municipalities.
The workers have not got bonuses also of last two Eids.
As the standard of the living condition decreased, the health workers naturally failed to render proper health services to the poor urban people.
The poor and ultra poor people in the urban areas are now suffering from inadequate treatment facilities.
When contacted, Abdul Hakim Majumder, the Project Director of the programme told The New Nation, “It is a harsh truth that the employees of the programme are passing hard days because their salaries have been pending for long. We are trying heart and soul to dissolve the crisis by May.” Sources said, 11 NGOs are involved in partnership with the project. Employees of the Health Care Centers said, the bidders were asked to submit tenders keeping the provision of medicines and other materials needed for medical treatment in those health care centers.
But they have not been asked to keep the workers’ salaries as per the then wages.
As a result, the project officials are now trying to curtail employees’ salaries to manage the cost limit keeping other costing as per the given chart. Many of the employees are in fear of losing jobs.
