Mokokchung, October 19 (MTNews): The Nagaland Association of Community Health Officers (NACHO) has begun its second phase of agitation where all affected CHOs will stage a “pen down strike” in response to the non-payment of salaries and Performance Based Incentives (PBI) to certain community health officers (CHO) affected by the 15th Finance Commission (FC).
The over 300-member association is protesting in solidarity with its members who have not received their salaries since April 2022.
Furthermore, the association claimed that the government has not provided any formal explanation for why the payments have been withheld.
NACHO launched the first phase of its agitation on October 11, 2022, after the Department of Health and Family Welfare and the Nagaland Health Mission (NHM) failed to resolve the issues despite “repeated notices and ultimatums.”
During the first phase of the agitation, all CHOs stopped working under the slogan ‘NO PAY, NO WORK,’ and wore a black badge to official duties. The total shutdown of work will continue in the second phase, as announced on Monday, and all affected CHOs will observe ‘Pen-Down’ where all documentation will be halted.
It may be noted that CHOs play a critical role in bridging the gap between the community and healthcare services. As a midlevel health care provider, community health officers have a wide range of responsibilities. A CHO’s responsibilities include ambulatory care, conducting surveys and disease surveillance, organizing outreach activities for public health promotion and disease prevention, maintaining records and submitting reports, managing the centres’ inventory, and much more.
NACHO has given the government until November 1, 2022, after which it has threatened “further drastic measures” if the issue is not resolved.