The NHM employees called off their strike on a written assurance. The one-month deadline has passed. The government now owes them action, not another committee.
A month ago, more than 12,000 National Health Mission employees across Jammu and Kashmir ended a ten-day strike. They did not win their demands. They won a piece of paper: a written assurance from Health Minister Sakeena Itoo, and a committee constituted on September 17 to examine their issues. On that basis, they went back to work and gave the government one month. That month is over. The silence from the Civil Secretariat is now louder than any protest.
The NHM employees have shown more patience than most. In April, they struck for two days and the government asked for two months to prepare a roadmap. Nothing came. They set an August 15 deadline. Nothing came. They issued a final ultimatum for September 5. Nothing came. Only when the strike entered its second week, and hospitals began reworking staff rosters, did the government produce a written commitment. Each time, the employees chose dialogue over disruption. Each time, the government chose delay.
Their demands are not new or unreasonable. They want a job policy after years of contractual service, many of them for close to 18 years. They want salary revision, timely wages, provident fund and insurance cover, and something for colleagues who retire with nothing after two decades. Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary himself called these demands genuine. The Health Minister said the employees were “our own people”. If the government agrees the demands are just, what exactly is the committee still examining?
NHM is the backbone of the health department. These are the doctors, nurses, paramedics and field workers who run immunisation drives, maternal care, tuberculosis control and rural clinics. When they stopped work in September, the system did not slow down. It stopped. Hospitals had to redraw staffing overnight. That alone should tell the government how much it depends on people it has refused to secure.
There is a warning sign the government should read carefully. On Tuesday, medical interns across Jammu and Kashmir resumed their strike. They too had been asked in September to give the government a month on their stipend demand. That month passed without a decision. They say they were humiliated when they went to ask about their file. A government that lets one written assurance lapse teaches every other group that its word is worth nothing.
The Omar Abdullah government came to power promising to be different from the administrations before it. Its leaders have spent months reminding the public that their promises run for five years, not two. That is fair. But a five-year promise does not mean five years of waiting. The employees asked for a month. The government agreed. Now it must deliver a timeline, a policy and a budget line, and it must do so before the employees are forced back on the road.
Trust was extended once. It will not be extended again on the same terms. The government should honour its word while there is still time to do so with dignity, rather than under the pressure of another shutdown.
