more-in As news of the Chief Minister’s announcement that the government would implement the Supreme Court guidelines regarding nurses’ wage structure broke, jubilation erupted in the camp of the Indian Nurses’ Association in front of the Secretariat where the nurses had been on a hunger strike for the past 21 days. They spilled on to the streets in abandon, unmindful of the rain. “We are happy that we have been able to open the eyes of the government and society to the terrible exploitation that nurses in the private sector have been up against all these years. This is a momentous day for us,” general secretary of the INA Mohammed Shihab told The Hindu. The stir by the nurses in the private sector for better wages had begun to spill on to the streets since 2009. But never before have the nurses been so organised or united and resolute in their demands that for the first time they were able to generate a public discussion about their issues. The meeting of the Industrial Relations Committee (IRC) and the Minimum Wages Committee in the morning had remained inconclusive. However, the Chief Minister held separate discussions with the nurses’ unions and the representatives of hospital managements before evolving a compromise formula acceptable to every one. Health Minister K.K. Shylaja, Labour Minister T.P. Ramakrishnan, and Law Minister A.K. Balan too were part of the discussions. The government had been under severe pressure, not just politically, but from society also to settle the strike amicably by offering them a better wage structure. Though the IRC meeting on July 11 revised the nurses’ wages to offer them a basic pay of ?17,200, with a gross salary of ?18,232, both the INA and the UNA had rejected the package. With the nurses intensifying their stir and the private hospital managements claiming that the huge hike in nurses’ salaries would escalate the health-care costs, all eyes had been on the Chief Minister-initiated discussions on Thursday. Ms. Shylaja expressed her happiness that the nurses had agreed to called off their strike. “The Health Department had been under severe strain as the strike by nurses in the private sector, especially during the height of the fever epidemic, was threatening to snowball into a major public health crisis,” she said. The issue of small hospitals and single-doctor clinics would be taken up separately and a solution evolved soon, she added.

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