Shillong, May 5: The Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) has temporarily suspended its indefinite sit-in-protest following the state government’s intervention and decision of the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) to halt the recruitment process till matters relating to their demands are resolved.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting chaired by cabinet minister Paul Lyngdoh in presence of NEIGRIHMS officials and KSU leaders on Monday, chairman of the KSU employment cell Reuben Najiar said, “We have decided to temporarily call off our protest as we have to process some of these documents. It will not be logical for us to stay here as these things will take time.”
“However, our protest will resume if demands are not met in the coming days,” he warned.
Najiar said not all issues were resolved during the meeting because there were issues which that can be resolved by NEIGRIHMS and there are some matters which will be pending before the governing council and some before Ministry of Health & Family Welfare especially with regards to enhancing the reservation for ST candidates and other matters.
“Accordingly, NEIGRIHMS have invited the union for dialogue tomorrow and we will be checking the roster register as we had pointed out that there is many ambiguity,”he added.
He informed that the KSU has raised the issue of age limit and said, “The sudden reduction in the age limit from 35 to 30 years will cause major problem for the candidates as they will not be able to apply for such posts and in the previous years, most of the candidates, were not able to apply because of Covid and also posts in central institute comes once in 3-4 years. So limiting the age limit will debarred these potential candidates, who have completed their education but not to be able to apply.”
“When it comes to the female-to-male ratio, initially the NEIGRIHMS stated it is the decision of the ministry but the union is of the view that the NEIGRIHMS has its own governing council with members from the ministry so the governing council itself can take decision that will amplify or solve this matter,” Najiar said while adding “The other issue is regarding the examination centre. Although NEIGRIHMS is in Meghalaya but we have to write our examinations in Guwahati, Delhi and other states. This is a problem especially for candidates from lower income groups. This will be detrimental to them. As a union we understand that Meghalaya does not have a proper infrastructure to conduct computer based examination so we suggested that why not do offline examination as in previous years including 2019 when the recruitment was taking place, everything was done in offline mode.
We understand that computer based examination is key to the future but until and unless we have proper infrastructure, we cannot opt for such an exhaustive kind of examination. We insisted that offline examination should be allowed to take place”.
