Scores of nurses recently laid off by the Telangana government today tried to lay siege to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's camp office Pragathi Bhavan.
Nurses who had been hired by the Telangana government on a contractual basis at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the state were recently dismissed from their jobs.
Today, a group of such nurses tried to lay siege to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's camp office Pragathi Bhavan, demanding that the state government take them back into service.
Saying that they had been employed by the government when Covid-19 cases were surging in the state, the nurses alleged that it had fired them in a "merciless manner" the moment the cases began to drop.
They said, "The state government has used our services for one-and-a-half years. But, we were all removed from our posts in an unjust fashion after Covid cases began to drop in Telangana. A total of 1,640 nurses have been laid off by the government. We have served the people of the state without caring for our own safety or lives since the outbreak of the pandemic. The treatment meted out to us is nothing short of unjust. So, we urge the government to be just to us. Its decision has left us helpless and unemployed."
The protestors then raised slogans, demanding that their posts be regularised immediately.
As tension gripped the area, the local police promptly arrested the nurses staging the sit-in that went on for nearly two hours and shifted them to a police station nearby.