Health workers strike work

Visakhapatnam: Contract employees working with the National AIDS Control Society (NACO) and the Andhra Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (APSACS) under the banner of AP State AIDS Control Society Employees’ Union struck work on Monday and staged a protest in front of the Collectorate here. They demanded job security and statutory employment benefits on par with others.

The contract employees led by Vizag unit president N Hari Babu and secretary Ch Krishnam Naidu told reporters that they had been working on a contract basis for over a decade, taking care of those suffering from HIV and AIDS, but they were denied increments, employment benefits and job security.

Raising slogans to press their justified long pending demands, the agitators asked for regularisation of their services, time-scale pay akin to regular employees and implementation of HR policy and few others.

“Even though APSACS is a government body and NACO is a Central government scheme, we have been getting too low salaries to lead the family and we didn’t get increments for years,” they said.

The one-day protest hit hard the patients as employees didn’t conduct HIV tests for hundreds of patients and even did not provide regular ART medicines to the patients.