VEHARI - Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) and Lady Health Workers (LHWs) are being ignored by the government as they have been playing vital role in providing health facilities to the public and collecting data regarding diseases and vaccines, TheNation has learnt.
Reportedly, National Health Programme was initiated in 1994 by late Benazir Bhutto. The basic purpose of this programme was to aware and educate peoples about the health of mother and infant and also spread awareness about family planning. Structure of this programme depends on LHSs and LHWs and their salary was fixed 3,000 and 1,200 respectively. But after passing a long period of 17 years, the salary has been increased to 7,000 only.
It has been leant that this sector is facing a lot of problems regarding its survival and the LHSs have not been paid salaries and fuel expenses for the last 18 months.
According to the representatives, the services of LHSs and LHWs are matchless as transparencies of PRSP statistics depend on this sector. They not only administrate vaccines to children and adults but also collect data of different diseases and lot of surveys are not possible without the cooperation of this sector, they added.  Now this important these employees are facing hunger and deprivation. It is also a part of record that a health supervisor, Rehana Yasmeen, committed suicide on Eid as she had no money to facilitate her children. In all other departments, maternity leaves are 90 days but the health worker and supervisors are given just 20 days. LHSs and LHWs have strongly condemned the government policies and demanded to take necessary actions to save the lives of their children.