Health care workers in line to receive hazard pay later this month

 

Promised hazard pay for health care workers should become available later this month, Executive Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) Juliet Bynoe-Sutherland said this evening

She made the disclosure as a petition circulating on social media made a case for the need for hazard pay and a reported threat by an official of the National Union of Public Workers to call for a national sick out of health care workers this coming Wednesday.

Bynoe-Sutherland said: “We wish to remind the public that the Government in November 2020 would have allocated Supplementary Funds for the payment of hazard pay to QEH frontline staff working at isolation centers, AED [Accident and Emergency Department, EAS

[Emergency Ambulance Service]. This supplementary was needed to replenish resources spent on COVID and our projection of costs through to the end of the financial year.

By December over $14.5 million in additional expenses had been spent in COVID expenditure directly from the QEH budget to finance equipment and operations at Blackman Gollop, Harrisons Point and the QEH.”

The hospital executive added that the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance held a meeting on Monday, January 4 with the Ministry of Health and the funds will soon be made available.

“It has been indicated to the QEH by the Ministry of Finance that the awaited supplementary funds should be available no later than the middle of this month as national developments have slowed the pace of dispersal. In fact, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance hoped that they could have transferred the funds last Friday and we remain confident of its soon receipt to make the payment,” Bynoe-Sutherland said.