March 15, 2006	Wednesday	Safar 14, 1427

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PESHAWAR, March 14: Nurses have threatened to go on strike for an indefinite period if the provincial government does not revoke its decision to close a nursing college and expel students from a portion of the nursing hostel.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, provincial secretary general of the NWFP Nursing Association Shakila Begum and other nurses’ representatives said they were applying peaceful means to settle the issue but warned that if the government continued to force them out of the nursing hostel they would have no other option but to go for a complete strike.

Dozens of nurses were also present on the occasion.

They alleged that the provincial government was forcibly evicting nurses from a portion of the hostel for women students studying in the first women medical college in Hayatabad township.

They claimed that the project head of the women’s medical college, Dr Ziaul Islam, was responsible for the action. In the past, he had ordered the use of batons against nurses when they were demanding their rights, they said.

Representatives said the hostel was functioning both as a Postgraduate College of Nursing and hostel in Hayatabad Phase-V, but the health department wanted to occupy a portion of the hostel to use it as a hostel for the girls studying in the women’s medical college.

Asked how much accommodation the hostel had and how many students were residing in the hostel, they said 53 students were studying and residing in the two-storey hostel which comprised 65 rooms.

However, they said that the rooms were so small that only one person could stay in a single room. “If we vacate a portion, it would create serious accommodation problems for the nursing students enrolled in 10 different faculties including those doing their specialisation in the college,” they said.

They said the premises was not even enough for the large number of students coming from the 24 districts of the province and if they vacated a portion of the hostel, the nurses would be compelled to live on roads. If the government can establish a separate medical college for girls, why could it not make arrangements for their accommodation, they remarked.

They expressed concern over the MMA government’s policies towards nurses and said it was a matter of shame that except the NWFP three provinces had upgradation scale of the nurses followed by a formal decision taken by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain when he was prime minister.

They also expressed concern over the low monthly stipend of Rs1,275 paid to them and asked the government to raise their stipend.

They threatened to go on strike for two hours daily from 8:00am to 10:00am if their demands were not accepted, and completely boycott work in Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex in the final phase of their protest.