The government ought to take responsibility for the problems in public hospitals

 

28 June 2024, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

Yesterday’s debate in the Parliamentary Health Affairs Committee on the policy of the State Health Services Organisation (OKYPY) to meet its needs for hourly staff and its intention to purchase services, has once again highlighted the serious problems and malpractices in public hospitals.

It is unthinkable that the permanent needs of nursing homes should be covered either by seasonal staff or by private individuals buying services, indeed at a much higher cost to the state. At the same time, the Ministry of Health, instead of exercising its supervisory role towards the OKYPY, is deliberately adopting a neutral stand, allowing the situation to deteriorate, with the danger of undermining labour relations in public hospitals.

We call on the Ministry of Health to take on its responsibilities and to restore order back into the OKYPY, which, as a public organisation, ought to be a model of labour relations and not act as a deregulator of labour relations.

Finally, we call on the government and the OKYPY to urgently take all the necessary measures to modernise and upgrade public hospitals, which constitute the main backbone of the National Health Scheme (GESY) and, by extension, of the public health system.

28.06.2024