On Saturday afternoon, when the district health officers of the state received an email from the State Director of National Health Mission to hold back salaries of the staff - both contractual and outsourced - it sent its 23,000 employees into a panic mode as they receive their salary latest before the fifth of every month.

Karnataka State Health Department Contractual and Outsourced Employees Association (KSHCOEA) sent a letter to the Director asking for reasons for the same to which they received no response till Sunday afternoon after which it reached out to the Press with a note.

Also read — Karnataka NHM staff salaries delayed until Jan 10

On Tuesday, the state NHM team has a meeting with the union government to discuss the budget for the coming financial year. Until then, DHOs were instructed to hold the salary and would get it likely by January 9 or 10 January, sources said.

The staff, all contractual and outsourced (NHM has no permanent staff), irrespective of the number of years of service are entitled to a five percent bonus over their salary at the end of every year. Apart from this, the staff that has completed three years and five years of service are entitled to an incremental bonus of 10% and 15% respectively.

This incremental bonus has not been given in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The association has been following up at various levels of the state and central government to get it.

Vishvaradya H Yamoji, president, KSHCOEA, told DH, "They are in a dilemma whether they should deduct the 5% bonus when they pay the incremental bonus to us."

State National Health Mission Director R Ramachandran told DH, "There is a revision by the Government of India in its approvals. So consequently, the revised pay needs to be calculated accordingly. Hence, the email. Also, today we have sent another fresh email to all DHOs to pay as per the revised supplementary norms."

