Govt and agitating nurses ink deal to pay nurses minimum of Rs 34,730 monthly

Kathmandu, Nov 1: The government and agitating nurses, who were staging protests for being low-paid, forged a consensus on Saturday.

Government officials and representatives of the nurses signed the deal after the talks held at the Ministry of Health and Population. Ministry’s Spokesperson Dr Prakash Budhathoki said that nurses would withdraw their protest programmes from Sunday after the government agreed to meet the demands of the agitating nurses.

According to Dr Budhathoki, the private medical colleges and large private hospitals from the month of Kartik would pay the nurses with minimum of Rs 34,730 in monthly salary, which is equal to the payment of fifth-level government employees.

Likewise, the private hospitals should pay 80 percent of the salary scale as per their capacity for now and should pay equal to the government scale within a month after the classification of the hospital. Dr Budhathoki stated that a task force will submit a report along with the recommendations within a month by conducting studies on this issue, and then the remaining hospitals too should pay salaries equal to the government standards.

In the talks, Minister for Health Dr Sudha Sharma Gautam, Ministry’s Secretary Dr Bikas Devkota, Dr Budhathoki, and representatives of the Nursing Association of Nepal and the private medical colleges were present.