Health workers want housing

THE PNG Community Health Workers’ Association has joined the PNG Nurses’ Association to push for housing from the government for its members.
“If they can do it for the nurses, why not for us too?
“We deserve to be accommodated as well,” general secretary James Amuna said yesterday.
Speaking on behalf of his members serving in the rural areas, Amuna said the government needed to come up with a standard plan to include housing within the facilities they worked.
In that way, he said, health workers would not need to travel.
Amuna told The National that the association had more than 3,000 members but not all were accommodated.
He said the CHWs working in the health centres and sub-health centres in their home provinces were accommodated in their villages, but otherwise they faced the same problem as other public servants.
Amuna also stressed the government should consider institutional housing as a priority.
“It is a big issue all around the country and the government and departments must consider this institutional housing problem as top priority now.”
He said every department should have houses built for its staff to cut costs.
Few public servants, Amuna said, have privileges to sleep in institutional houses but they paid for the rental at reasonable rates.
“If the government and departments can build more than enough houses to accommodate its workers, they too can pay the bills.”
He suggested the government secure land to build houses for public servants.