Minister seeks civil service status for nurses
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Public Health Minister Witthaya Buranasiri affirmed yesterday he would propose to the Cabinet that over 7,500 civil service positions be filled this year by nurses working at health units around the country on a temporary basis since 2006.
The minister admitted that a shortage of qualified staff would affect the health system. He cited a study that found 49 per cent of hired nurses quit in the first year, while another 26 per cent quit in their second year, and that there were few left by the fifth year, due to the lack of job security.
Witthaya said he would propose more civil service positions for health workers up to 2017 via a five-year plan. As well as the proposal for this fiscal year, he would ask for 10,030 positions in 2013, 9,276 in 2014, 14,093 in 2015, 18,024 in 2016, and 18,024 in 2017.
Among the 21 groups of health employees, nurses had the most people – over 31,900 of nearly 130,000 health employees, waiting for civil service posts, Witthaya said. So, officials would would |look at the year that nurses began work, the areas they served, and how they had performed.
He said he also would ask for a (retroactive) Bt700 pay hike for all health workers for the nine months from January until September 2012. That would amount to Bt815.6 million totally.
Witthaya took the request for nurses to get civil service positions from a group of 25 nurses at the Royal Cliff Hotel in Pattaya, where the mobile Cabinet met. He said he could give them an answer in two weeks, after discussing the move with the Office of Civil Service Commission (OCSC).
Meanwhile, some 2,000 nurses rallied at Parliament, demanding the government speedily appoint them and their colleagues to 17,000 civil service positions. They demanded to know what progress had been made on their previous request submitted to Witthaya on March 26 for the government to get the OCSC and State Resources and Policy Specification Committee to place temporary nurses into civil service positions.
They also urged links between the Health Ministry and the OCSC be severed. They claim the civil service body doesn’t understand the health system or its personnel shortages when considering civil service position vacancies.
The group said if they didn’t get satisfactory answers and Witthaya didn’t have any clear ideas, nurses nationwide may quit their jobs. They also warned that if OCSC didn’t back their requests, they would push to get OCSC secretary-general Nonthikorn Kanchanajitra removed from his post.
