No plan to displace locals, says PM

 By ELIAS NANAU

THE recruitment of foreign health workers from overseas is not meant to displace or make locals redundant,  Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.

“No one is trying to put a Papua New Guinean out of a job,” O’Neill said.

He told nurses at the Port Moresby General Hospital’s refurbished Children’s Ward which he opened yesterday that government’s focus on improving health care was making available adequate health professionals including the recruitment of overseas professionals.

“If we upset a few for the greater good of this country, I’m sorry we have to do it,” O’Neill said.

O’Neill told the nurses and the board of the hospital headed by chairman Sir Theo Constantinou that they were doing a wonderful job so far.

“Our government has made a serious commitment and that is to help the health sector reach a standard where our people want it to be,” he said.

O’Neill said many governments and hospital executives had come and gone but they did not take time to do simple things.

He said the government would renovate and maintain existing health facilities.

“This is the biggest hospital and we face the biggest challenges. 

“When you do it here, it becomes a role model for other general hospitals,” O’Neill said.

“We must not be afraid to say we need help.”

The children’s ward can cater for 20 and it has been done up again after 20 years.

Yesterday’s opening was the first of a four-stage project that to cost K400,000.

The ward has two nursing rooms, four stationery rooms, four doctor’s consultation rooms and a treatment room.

Sister in Charge Lonny N’Bon said they did not have enough staff to do a 24-hour shift.

She said they have three doctors, eight nurses and six community health workers who treat about 200 patients a day.

“We are also short of drugs,” N’Bon said.

She said they needed oximeters, scopes and nebulisers.