St John scaling down services due to govt’s failure to honour pledge

By Rebecca Kuku
THE St John Public Ambulance Service has been forced to reduce its services in Port Moresby and Central because of the Government’s failure to honour its funding commitment.
Chairperson of the National St John Council Madam Jean Kekedo, pictured, said it was forced to reduce its public emergency services because only 10 per cent of the Government’s funding commitment for this year had been met.
“Because of delays in the release of funds for the National Ambulance Service, it was only able to staff half the ambulances the city needs – two instead of five as a minimum,” she said.
“We have already been forced to lay off one-third of public emergency operators from the 111-emergency call centre we operate for the government and are nine months behind schedule in meeting targets for the National Ambulance Service.”
Kekedo said the St John ambulance service covered one-quarter of the country’s population providing professional services but delays in government funding forced the suspension of some services in the NCD and Central this week.
“The national ambulance service budget this year was parked under the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, not under the Department of Health like before.
“I have instructed our CEO to priorities our activities to commercial medical services we offer that generate revenue. These private services include air ambulance retrieval, medical supplies, first aid sales and medical training.
“The public service has kept running in NCD this year only because of significant support from National Capital District and the corporate community, including Digicel, BSP, Trakpro, MJ Electrical, Puma, the Australian Government, Sir Brian Bell Foundation and others.
“However, this corporate and donor support alone is insufficient to cover the cost of providing public services to a growing population, and meeting ever increasing demand.”
Kekedo said that the public ambulance service’s situation had been made worse by the recent spate of “rascal attacks” on public emergency ambulances.
“These attacks have caused over K60,000 in unbudgeted damages – that’s one fortnight’s payroll lost to damage. So we will be scaling down on our public ambulance service.”