Hardwon right gets diluted as contract nurses are denied paid maternity leave
It was a bolt from the blue for Malarvizhi (name changed), a nurse working at a government facility in north Tamil Nadu, when she was told the Health Department would recover the salary paid during her maternity leave. The contractual nurse is upset at losing out on the hardwon right of paid maternity leave.
For nurses like her, who were recruited through the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) and working on contract, it is a struggle for more than regularisation of service. A protest in 2021 fetched the contract nurses maternity leave with salary benefits, a right that has now gotten diluted. As International Nurses Day was observed on Friday, a number of nurses, holding their toddlers, staged a protest in Chennai, demanding their rights.
“We fought for paid maternity leave and obtained it in 2021. Prior to that, we had nurses returning to work in a few months — two months after undergoing a Caesarean section. But this was not implemented in all districts. In November 2022, the Health Department issued a circular that the State government could not pay maternity leave benefits to contract nurses working on a consolidated pay under the National Health
Mission (NHM),” said a nurse, who joined service in 2015.
The NHMTamil Nadu, on May 2 this year, said these instructions were applicable to MRBappointed contract staff nurses, including those placed on a contract basis/outsourced under various schemes of the NHM.
All heads of departments were requested to recover the leave salary amount paid during maternity leave availed by the
MRBappointed contract staff nurses. “We were recruited by the government through the MRB. They posted many of us to work in NHM schemes, including those relating to reproductive and child health and noncommunicable diseases, and now, they are denying us such benefits,” a nurse said.
During pregnancy, many of them work till the expected date of delivery, another nurse said, adding, “We get no exemption from night shifts or 24hour duty.”
A group of nurses said they were not entitled to medical leave, and if they needed leave for emergencies, loss of pay was only the option.
An official of the Health Department said contract nurses were entitled to the same benefits as other employees recruited on contract by the government. The official did not deny that the maternity benefits were halted for the nurses.