Grand Health Alliance (GHA), a group of healthcare professionals pushing for improved working conditions, carried out their earlier threat to march on the Sindh Chief Minister’s House after Friday prayers if the government did not include the health risk allowance in their pay by midday.
Since Monday, the alliance has been holding a sit-in outside the Sindh Secretariat.
Police who had set up temporary barriers on Dr. Ziauddin Ahmed Road earlier today halted the demonstrators outside DJ Science College. Negotiations with the demonstrators were still going on, South SSP Syed Asad Raza had previously informed Dawn.com.
However, soon before 5 o’clock, video on TV networks depicted police officers rushing the protestors with batons and dragging them over the ground. Additionally, female protesters were seen being detained by female officers.
SSP Raza subsequently revealed to Dawn.com that the Sindh government has issued a notice creating a committee for having negotiations with the demonstrators.
The officer claimed that the demonstrators were shown the notification by the officials, who then urged them to leave the main artery.
SSP Raza stated that the protesters “rejected the notification and demanded the health minister personally visit them and assure them their demands are accepted.”
He continued by saying that the protesting medical professionals had stopped the main thoroughfare and inconvenienced commuters.
“As a consequence, police sent in the riot squad, which used water cannons to disperse them and detained 25 protestors, including 10 women,” he claimed.
According to SSP Raza, the male protestors would likely face legal action but the female demonstrators would likely be freed. He also refuted the assertion that police had used baton charges against the medical professionals.
According to Dr. Faizan Memon of the Young Doctors Alliance, police officials conducted discussions with the demonstrators during which it was decided that they would leave the main road and resume their sit-in outside the Sindh Secretariat.
However, as soon as we began to approach the Sindh Secretariat, the police broke their word and began baton-charging and deploying water cannons to disperse the demonstrators, according to Memon.
He asserted that all of the alliance’s leaders had been detained.
SSP Raza, for his part, denied making an arrangement with the demonstrators.
A “grievance redressal committee” had been established, according to a notice the Services Department sent later in the day.
The provincial ministers for information, local government, labor, and the secretaries of finance and health make up the committee.
The notification stated that “the committee will interact with GHA and will make recommendations to the government.”
The health administration removed the Covid-19 risk allowance last month on the grounds that the pandemic no longer presented a hazard to the populace.
Due to the doctors, nurses, and paramedics’ boycott of all outpatient services other than emergency care, patients throughout Sindh continue to experience difficulties.
The demonstrators are calling for the reinstatement of the risk allowance that was put in place more than two years ago when the epidemic hit the nation.
From grade one to grade sixteen, healthcare professionals received a payment of Rs17,000. Those in grades seventeen and beyond received a payment of Rs35,000. In 2020, it was also stopped, but after protests, it was subsequently restarted.
Over a dozen healthcare professionals who were marching towards the Chief Minister’s House were recently arrested by the police.
