Representatives of nurses and midwives will not strike because of problems in receiving their minimum salaries they said during a meeting with Health Minister Zuzana Zvolenská at which time she promised to resolve the current dispute by allocating €50 million from the state reserve, the SITA newswire reported.
“We have set the legislation in the way to find funds already in the existing system and redistribute them to have this commitment covered,” Zvolenská told a congress of nurses and midwives held in Poprad on April 27, as quoted by SITA. “The novelty that we bring here today is the agreement on the way of using the reserve of €50 million by a non-systemic payment together with the Finance Ministry.”
Zvolenská wants to get the money by increasing the payments of the state for economically inactive people since she considers it the only possibility.
“We will demand to not create an administrative fund from this money; not to use it for creation of profit and mainly to redistribute the funds into the system proportionally and justly among all segments,” she stated, as quoted by SITA, adding that the money should flow not only into hospitals but also into outpatient units. She stressed that the employers should not use the funds for repaying old debts or as investments.
The chair of the Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives, Mária Lévyová, said she hopes that the commitment of the Health Ministry will be fulfilled. She said that the reserve will be a temporary solution to existing problems that might be solved through passing other laws pertaining to the better division of health insurance payments.
Lévyová added that she hopes that the employers will now abolish all disadvantageous employment agreements changing the status of nurses or reducing their working hours in order to avoid the increase in the minimum salary for nurses, SITA wrote.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
