Nurses to stop work

Main Stories

NURSES throughout Papua New Guinea will stop work tomorrow as the Government has failed to address their weeklong sit-in protest for the delay of the implementation of their 2021-2023 awards last week, an official says.
On Friday, PNG Nurses Association (PNGNA) general secretary Gibson Siune said the nurses had protested for five days but had not received the anticipated outcome from the secretaries of the departments of Health, Personnel Management (DPM), Finance and Treasury.
“We had correspondence through WhatsApp and phone calls from DPM and Health Department (and) they said we will meet on Monday 1.30pm,” he said.
“So we’ll stick to that and the protest will continue up to Monday.”
Siune said if nothing happened today then tomorrow, all the nursing officers serving in rural areas of the country and in the main centres would stop work.
“They will pull out from their duty and we will leave it to the doctors, health extension officers and community health workers to maintain the health facility starting Tuesday,” he said.
Siune said all the nurses wanted was for the respective departments to tell them at what stage they were in the configuration of the awards and when it would be paid because the year was ending.
He said the nurses continued to faithfully serve in the frontline of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic without risk allowance and insurance covered in the awards and some nurses had already contracted the virus and passed on.
PNGNA president Frederick Kebai said the department heads were taking this issue lightly and were not responding to the correspondence sent to their office.
“We don’t want verbal responses,” he said. “They must put things on record, write to us in black and white with clear-cut information.”