SHANGLA: Lady Health Workers Association, Shangla, on Friday demanded of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to fulfil its promise and regularise the workers appointed in 2015 and 2018.

The association’s president Shahid Khan and general secretary Ruqia Bibi told mediapersons here that the provincial government was delaying the regularisation of LHWs, lady health supervisors and their drivers who were appointed in 2015 and 2018.

They said that the LHWs had been performing their duties despite challenges to reach every household in the hard terrains of the district for polio and Covid vaccination besides routine immunisation.

Shahid Khan said that they had staged protests in Islamabad and Peshawar where the representatives of the federal and provincial governments made promises with them that the LHWs would be regularised on priority basis, but they did not see any practical steps in this regard even after a year.

He said that LHWs were housewives with children and could not block roads and stage protests like other employees for acceptance of their demands.

Ruqia Bibi said they wanted job security because they feared that they could be terminated anytime without assigning any reason.

She said that the government should immediately fulfil its promise to regularise all the LHWs across the province. She said the government had regularised teachers appointed recently, but ignored them.

She said they would boycott their duties if not regularised in the coming weeks.

COP DROWNS: A constable drowned after a police van fell into the Indus River in Kund area near Bisham here on Thursday night.

Rescue 1122 official told this scribe that the police van had drowned along with the driver constable Mohammad Sultan. He said that they recovered the vehicle on Friday morning, but their divers could not trace body of the constable.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2022