Patients coming to state-run hospitals are set to face a tough time as over 1 lakh employees working at the establishments on contract would go on an indefinite strike on October 14 demanding service regularisation.

The strike would be held under the banner of Bihar State Contractual Health Employees’ Federation.

The health services in Bihar depend to a great extent on the contract employees because of paucity of regular ones.

“The contract employees, including doctors, monitoring and evaluation officers, data entry officers, accountants, auxiliary nurse midwives, ASHA workers, para-medical staff among others would be on strike at the ground in front of the state health society and in the districts from October 14,” said Afroz Anwar, the chairperson of the federation.

He added that nothing less than a written assurance regarding regularisation of services would be acceptable for calling off the strike.

Citing reasons for their demand of service regularisation, federation secretary Lalan Kumar Singh said: “It is our long-pending demand. The government’s apathy has forced us to take this step.”

Singh added that his association’s other demand was timely processing of payments to the contract workers.

“Our working hours should be fixed and we should not be assigned work after that. Formulating standard for performance-based appraisal is also one of our demands,” said Singh.