A group of COVID-19 contractual health care workers on Tuesday tried to storm the Manipur Chief Minister’s Secretariat in Imphal.
Multi-tasking staff and staff nurses have been protesting in support of their demand for extension of service, apart from payment of their salaries pending for four months.
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They were appointed on a contractual basis by the Manipur government to meet the manpower shortage at the COVID care centres last year.
The agitating workers had locked the office chamber of the Director of the State Health Services a few days back.
They also staged a sit-in-demonstration on Monday.
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As the contractual workers reached the gate of the Secretariat at Babupara on Tuesday, the police pushed them back to the Nupi Lal Memorial Complex, around 100 metres away.
Though the workers demanded to meet the chief minister, they did not get an appointment.
The health department had appointed 150 staff nurses, 100 multi-tasking staff and 74 medical officers in August last year on a contractual basis for three months.
The appointments were made in view of the then grim COVID-19 situation and as a precautionary measure to prevent escalation of the pandemic.
Ahead of the expiry of the service period of the contractual workers, Chief Minister N Biren Singh recently stated that the contractual workers would no longer be engaged in view of the consistent decline in the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the State.