TIMERGARA, Jan 9: Scores of lady health workers (LHWs) in Lower Dir on Wednesday refused to perform duty during anti-polio campaign owing to security risks, sources said.
The decision was made during an urgent meeting of LHWs held at tehsil headquarters hospital in Talash with Shaista Raza in the chair.
The meeting was attended by 37 LHWs. They condemned attacks on health workers in parts of the country and demanded of the government to provide foolproof security to them.
Prominent among the participants of the meeting were Nusrat Bibi, Shabnum, Mukhtiar Begum, Mussarat, Perveen and Fauzia. Through a hand written application, they told the EDO health that they would be unable to perform duty in the anti-polio drive owing to attacks on health workers.
“We belong to poor families and work only to earn livelihood for them,” they said, adding that their lives were at risk and that’s why they could not perform duty. They said that they would rejoin duty when security situation improved.
They demanded of the government to provide security to them, increase their per diem to Rs1,000 from Rs225, compensate the families of those health workers, who were injured in attacks and provide plots and monthly scholarship to the families of those, who lost their lives in the line of duty.
An official of health department, requesting not to be named, told Dawn that neither they had they received any written application from the LHWs nor any of them had publicly refused to perform duty during polio campaign.
He said that arrangements were finalised for the next polio drive date of which could not be made public owing to security reasons.
The official said that 407 LHWs were working in Dir Lower. “We will depute other LHWs if someone refuses,” he said.
RIFT IN PTI: Maidan chapter of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) split into two groups as one of them rejected the recently held intra-party elections in the area.
Talking to journalists, Advocate Malik Mohammad Rashid termed the intra-party elections in Maidan fake and said that they had rejected the same. He said workers had also sent written observations to PTI provincial chief election commissioner Qazi Anwar in that regard.
He said that local organisers got signatures of party workers in the name of reconciliation but later showed the same as their willingness to elect office-bearers of PTI in Maidan.
The PTI activist demanded of the party leadership to reorganise the party in Dir Lower and take workers into confidence.
GUARDS: Two security guards have demanded of the managing director of a cellular phone company to release their salaries.
Redi Gul and Mohammad Karam told journalists that they were performing duty at tower No.1349 of the cellular phone company in Timergara. The tower was destroyed in July 2010 flash floods, they said.
They said that they had not been paid salaries for the last eight months. They said that they performed duty as guards though the tower was lying uprooted in water of the Panjkora River.