Lady health workers give govt one week to withdraw programme's merger or face protest.

KARACHI -- Lady health workers will not accept merger of their programme and will hold a protest demonstration outside the Chief Minister House if the government does not withdraw its decision within a week, warned representatives of the All Pakistan Lady Health Workers Association at a presser held at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday.

'We will never let this happen. This is unconstitutional and illegal,' said Bushra Arain, heading the association.

The government, she said, could not make structural changes in the programme as it's a violation of the 2013 Supreme Court order which stated that the basic design of the programme couldn't be changed and the then federal government run by the PPP had agreed to that.

On behalf of the association, she vowed that the lady health workers would fight against this 'controversial' step at every forum and seek legal recourse if the government did not withdraw its decision within a week.

Answering a question about how the government had made structural changes in the programme, she explained that the provincial government in the budget book 2020-21 had merged eight health programmes, including the lady health worker programme, and removed them from the development...