CHENNAI: The State government will soon issue a Government Order granting paid maternity leave to nurses recruited through the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB), Health and Family Welfare Minister Ma Subramanian said on Friday. He also announced that appointment orders confirming the services of 831 nurses would be issued before Pongal as part of the State’s phased regularisation programme.

Speaking to reporters after issuing regularisation orders to 169 contract nurses, appointment orders to 31 personnel through transfer, and releasing the seniority list of 15,645 nurses at the Directorate of Medical Services campus, the Minister said the DMK government had regularised 4,825 nurses since assuming office.

He said demands had been raised to regularise over 8,000 MRB nurses, following which the government announced that 1,000 nurses would be confirmed before Pongal. “Of these, 169 nurses have been regularised today. The remaining 831 will receive confirmation orders before Pongal, with new posts being created in line with the expansion of medical infrastructure,” he said.

The Minister noted that the MRB recruitment system, introduced in 2015 during the previous AIADMK regime, had filled only 1,871 posts. In contrast, the present government had expanded recruitment and regularisation significantly, he added.

Referring to the COVID-19 period, Subramanian said 724 nurses who served during the pandemic sought contractual appointments, while 2,144 nurses were allowed to continue on contract through a government notification, though they were not regularised.