Nurses at Shahid Dharma Bhakta National Transplant Centre, Bhaktapur, halted all health services except emergency and Intensive Care Unit today, demanding permanent appointment of the staff nurses working at the hospital and providing facilities as per seniority.

The hospital employs 97 nurses.

The nurses at the government hospital have been staging protests since yesterday.

Trajina Jati, a staff nurse said that the nurses had been working at the hospital for nearly six years and hence, they should be granted permanent status based on seniority.

She said, “We have been working for many years at the hospital, but we are not provided with the facilities and salary befitting our experience.”

Other demands of the protesting nurses include providing monthly salary on time, training, conference and camp opportunities for old staff and providing facilities and salary on a par with other government hospitals.

Nursing staff started halting services to protest the hospital’s plan of hiring staff for permanent positions through open competition, in coordination with the Public Service Commission.

Dr Pukar Chandra Shrestha, executive director at the hospital, said that it could not grant a permanent status to its nursing staff at its discretion.“Since, the hospital is government-owned, it should follow the standard process of appointing permanent staff. Therefore, examination procedure through Public Service Commission is a must in hiring permanent staff,” he said. Dr Shrestha claimed that the plan to conduct PSC examination is as per the provision of the constitution.

“Earlier, we had worked on a procedure to appoint nursing staff through internal competition, but the nurses didn’t allow us to publish the results. Therefore, this time we have been planning an open competition to hire nurses,” he said.