KARAK: Hundreds of lady health workers on Saturday blocked the Indus Highway at Jail Chowk to demand regularisation of their services.

The protesters led by LHWs association’s district president Kalsoom Sultana, senior vice president Rifat Jehan and general secretary Iftikhar Bano marched from the district headquarters hospital to the main artery and blocked it to traffic. They carried placards inscribed with slogans in favour of their demands.

The protesters said that both the federal and the provincial governments had issued notifications regularising their services, but the provincial coordinator of lady health workers programme was sitting on the notification. They demanded issuance of the notification without delay and payment of their arrears from June 2012, when the notification was issued.

The lady health workers complained that they had not been given the remunerations of the last six anti-polio and anti-measles campaigns, and their salaries had also been stopped for last three months.

They claimed that the district health officer Mohammad Daraz had promised before the recent anti-polio campaign that the remunerations would be paid to all health workers on the last day of the campaign, but he failed to materialise his words.

They resolved to boycott the next anti-polio campaign if the remunerations were not paid to them without delay. They also demanded reinstatement of the terminated health workers.

Later, the protesters dispersed peacefully after the assistant commissioner Attaul Munem visited the workers and assured them of discussing their demands with the deputy commissioner on Monday.

Published in Dawn, August 31, 2014