Malabag proposes Laloki housing for nurses

 HEALTH Minister Michael Malabag yesterday proposed to Prime Minister Peter O’Neill that nurses should be accommodated at the Laloki Psychiatric Centre, outside Port Moresby.

This he said could be one strategy to ease accommodation woes faced by nurses, which affected their commitment to work.

Malabag also appealed to O’Neill to intervene and ensure the Gerehu housing controversy for nurses was solved as soon as possible.

He told O’Neill to task Housing Minister Paul Isikiel to resolve the issue.

Malabag and O’Neill were at the Port Moresby General Hospital for the opening of the children’s ward.

He said the hospital was seeing marked improvements. 

“We are going to the basics and that is to improve existing facilities and providing efficient delivery of patient care,” Malabag said.

“Rest assured we will do everything we can,” he said.

Malabag, the former Public Employees Association president, said he had been with the union too long to know that there were “closed door networks” of people who do not want change.

“We have to change that.  No one is indispensable,” he said.

O’Neill has assured the minister that housing woes would be addressed but it would not be done overnight.

“We want the nurses not to go home but stay here and work,” he said.

The prime minister said if the nurses’ accommodation were built close to the hospital and the working environment was attractive, nurses would commit themselves to their jobs.