Agartala: A scuffle broke out between protesting trained nurses and cops at Agartala when the police abruptly tried to stop the secretariat march of job seeking nurses. The police allegedly showed high-handedness on the agitating nurses and even disregarded the apron they were wearing. The protestors also asked whether asking for jobs was a crime or not.
According to the protestors, hundreds of ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwifery) and GNM (General Nursing Midwifery) trained nurses gathered in front of the Directorate of Health Services, located in the Gurkhabasti area, to seek a recruitment drive. They complained that for the last five years the government did not initiate any recruitment drive for the posts that fit their eligibility.
“We have around six thousand trained nurses sitting idle at homes. The government has more than two thousand posts vacant in different hospitals but no initiatives have been undertaken to fill up those posts. Which is why this protest program was organized in consultation with all the unemployed nurses to mount pressure on the state government,” Dipanjan Deb, one of the protesters, told EastMojo.
However, security arrangements were tightened up at the entrance of the Civil secretariat. The protestors were first tried to be persuaded to stop their march and retreat. But, the protesting youth argued that they wanted to talk to the health Secretary and they had no intention to disrupt the peace of the VIP area. However, police prevented them from entering the secretariat premises and a scuffle broke out between the police and trained nurses.
All protesters were detained at the AD Nagar police reserve ground. They were later released in the evening. Speaking on the issue, sources in the police department said around a hundred protestors were detained after the scuffle. The police said the protestors did not have prior permission.
One of the nurses said, “police personnel have treated us so badly that most of us felt we were not nurses but anti-national elements. They have even disregarded the apron we had been wearing during the protests.”
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