Money woes prevent city hospital from recruiting for 10 years

By ELIZABETH MIAE
THE Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) has not embarked on a recruitment drive in 10 years due to lack of funding, according to the chief executive officer Sam Vegogo.
He told The National in an interview yesterday that new restructures were done in 2006 and 2008 however, the hospital managements then could not recruit because there was no funding.
Vegogo said money had been allocated this year, enabling the hospital management to implement the new restructure beginning with internal advertising of positions.
Issuing of notifications to successful applicants for the internal positions began on Wednesday however that did not go down well with some staff who did not receive any notifications which meant that they were now unattached.
But Vegogo explained that there was a pre-selection process done by divisional heads with the human resource management (HRM) before a final selection was done with representatives from the Health Department HRM, Personnel Management Department and the hospital management.
He said those who had applied and missed out, was due to the reclassification of the positions in the new restructure which required upgraded qualifications or that the applicants had reached their retirement age or for medical reasons.
He added that the last recruitment was done 10 years ago and between that time and now, staff either resigned or retired and that left a big gap.
As a result he said about 400 casual workers had to be recruited. 
Vegogo further explained that the casuals were unattached to the old restructure and were not on public service payroll.
He said after clearing out the internal positions in the new restructure, positions would be recreated and will be advised externally allowing the casuals to also apply for the positions.
“I’m trying my best to tidy up internally before we try to recruit outside. That doesn’t mean that the people who missed out are not good workers,” he said.
One of the restructure mechanisms that Vegogo and his management team are working on is the Service Improvement Plan 2011-15 for the hospital.