Norms violated in nursing recruitment and transfer

On February 7, 2017, the state health department had put out a government order (GO) announcing the creation of 799 vacancies for nursing staff across the state. As per the GO, counselling for these 799 posts was to be held on April 19 either through promotion, or transfer or recruitment of fresh candidates. 

Shockingly, more than half of these vacancies were already filled before the date of the counselling (April 19) exposing a huge irregularity in the health department recruitment and transfer process. According to documents obtained through RTI from eight southern districts, where this violation is rampant, a total of 124 nursing vacancies had been filled either through transfer or recruitment before the counselling was held.

Documents available with DT Next reveal that 23 nursing positions were filled in Kanniyakumari district, 15 posts in Madurai, 36 in Virudhunagar, 15 in Thoothukudi, 7 in Dindigul, 8 in Ramnad, 9 in Tiruchy and 11 in Tirunelveli even before counselling was held. 

Speaking to this newspaper, S Kumar of Virudhunagar, who is presently working as a nurse in Karur, said that corruption was so rampant in the nurses recruitment and transfer process that the February 7 GO for 799 posts was not even made known by the health department and the entire process of transfer and recruitment was done by brokers. “Thus genuine candidates who await a transfer or a job as a government staff nurse are completely in the dark. When we tried to approach the Director of Medical and Rural Health Services, we were threatened with police action,” he said. 

Some of the petitioners approached the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court seeking justice. “The court has ordered the health department to revert to our allegations but that has not yet happened,” said Kumar, who is one of the petitioners.