Health Assistants Announce New Program to Realize Demands

The Bangladesh Health Assistants Association, an organization of health assistants, has called for a strike again on 6-point demands including amendment to the employment code. The organization's central coordination council has announced that it will start an indefinite peaceful sit-in program at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka from Saturday (November 29) if the government does not issue a notification by Thursday (November 27) to implement the demands.

Wasi Uddin Rana, chief coordinator of the organization's central coordination council, announced the program at a press conference at the Jahurul Haque Hall of the National Press Club on Monday (November 24). Member Secretary Fazlul Haque Chowdhury, chief organizer Ziaul Haque Kabul, Abdus Salam and others were present at the press conference.

The leaders said that they have been applying to the relevant department for a long time with 6-point demands including amendment to the employment code, elimination of salary disparity and technical rank. They expressed anger over the 5-time breach of promise despite repeated assurances that the demands were reasonable.

They alleged that due to the delay in implementing their demands, they had started the strike from October 1, stopping all activities including preparing reports on the EPI and Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) programs at 120,000 outreach vaccination centers across the country. When the situation became serious, senior officials of the Directorate General of Health Services and the Ministry of Health sat for discussions on October 6. After the discussions, the health assistants suspended the strike for a month. Later, they successfully completed the task of vaccinating about 50 million children at the educational institutions and community levels.

The leaders further alleged that as soon as they raised their demands, their movement was stopped on various pretexts. We kept our word, but the authorities did not keep it. This time everyone is adamant. We no longer believe in assurances—we want implementation. They said that if the transfer of two colleagues is not withdrawn and the six-point demand is not published in the form of a notification, the program will be tightened further.

The demands of the health assistants in the movement are

Amending the recruitment rules to grant technical ranks to those with a 14th grade degree or equivalent qualification and those with an in-service diploma with a 11th grade degree; ensuring consistently higher grades in promotions; including health assistants, assistant health inspectors and health inspectors in the graduate scale without training; including the time scale or higher scale obtained in the redetermination of the salary scale and recognizing those who have completed an in-service diploma (SIT) as equivalent.