Nurses raise slogans after their strike was called off in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar/Cuttack, July 25: Contractual nurses today called off their 11-day strike following Orissa High Court’s intervention and the state government’s threat to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma) against them.

The nurses will resume work from tomorrow.

A spokesperson for the agitating nurses said they were calling off the strike because of the high court’s intervention and in the larger interest of people. “We will work two hours extra for 15 days to compensate the disruption in health services because of our agitation. However, we will continue our dharna after the working hours,” said Shibani Das of the Nurses’ Association.

On July 23, the high court asked the state government to explain why Esma had not been imposed against the striking contractual nurses. At the same time, the court had directed the government to redress their genuine grievances. The case is expected to come up for hearing tomorrow.

Over 1,500 contractual nurses working in three government-run medical colleges and hospitals had stopped work from July 15, demanding regularisation of jobs and salary hike. At present, a contractual nurse gets a consolidated salary of Rs 5,200 a month.

The strike had affected functioning of the government hospitals with authorities making special arrangements by hiring private nurses and nursing students to run the healthcare facilities.

On July 23, the government said it would regularise services of those contractual nurses who had completed six years of service. The nurses, however, were adamant on their demand of a period of three years being considered for job regularisation.

As the nurses had rejected the offer, the state government toughened its stance and threatened to invoke Esma. Health secretary Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said the strike period would be considered as a break in service and the nurses would have to put in another six years to become eligible for regularisation.

The association, while calling off the agitation, threatened to stage a demonstration in front of the Assembly during the monsoon session next month.

“The state government has failed to fill up around 10,000 vacant nursing posts. We will press for filling up of the vacancies,” said nurse association president Gangadhar Panigrahi.

In another development the division bench of Justice B.P. Das and Justice Indrajit Mohanty today granted one-month time to the state government to complete the process of selection of assistant professors for the 120 vacant posts in the three government-run colleges and hospitals, for which advertisement was issued in August 2010.

State chief secretary Bijay Patnaik and Mohapatra today appeared before the high court in this regard.