NMC puts appointment of 340 health staff on hold

Nashik: With the number of Covid cases on the decline, the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has withheld the appointment of 340 health workers, including 25 MBBS doctors and 50 nurses.

An NMC official said if cases start rising again, these health workers would again be given the letters. The second wave was bigger than the first one as around 1.5 lakh people were infected by the contagion. The NMC had recruited around 1,000 health workers on temporary basis in February and March to provide treatment to Covid patients during the second wave.

The cases continued to rise in the moth of April, but the trend started changing from May onwards and in the following months the Covid scenario improved further.

However, there has been a projection for the third wave by the experts that is most likely to begin around September or October. Considering that the number of people that may get infected will be more during the third wave, the NMC had planned to enhance medical infrastructure and increase the manpower to provide better treatment to the patients.

Accordingly, during the last week of July, the civic administration had conducted a walk-in interview to recruit various medical staffers on temporary basis for 340 posts, including health staffers like MBBS, MD doctors, staff nurses, hospital managers and other posts.

During the first two waves of the pandemic the response from the doctors was lukewarm after the NMC had invited applications. The NMC had shortlisted the candidates for all the vacant posts and had planned to issue the appointment letters from the second week of August. But now this decision has been put on hold.

An NMC official said they will now take a call on giving the appointment letters to health workers after September 15. “If the cases start increasing, then NMC will immediately start giving appointment letters,” he added.