Nurses Disappointed at Not Being Allowed to Address House

Bratislava, February 11 (TASR) – The Nurse and Midwives Labour Union (OZSaPA) along with Slovak Nurse and Midwives Chamber (SaPA) voiced their disappointment that their representatives were denied the opportunity to address Parliament during the extraordinary session on education and health care crisis, TASR learnt on Thursday.

Opposition MPs demanded that the teacher and nurse unionists be given the floor at the beginning of the session, a move allowed by the rules of procedure under certain circumstances. However, the governing Smer-SD turned down the proposal.
According to a statement, the nurses planned to defend their demands in the House. “Also, we wanted to thank lawmakers Pavol Freso (SDKU-DS), Miroslav Beblavy (Independent/Siet) and Jozef Viskupic (OLaNO-NOVA) for their supportive motion to allow us give a speech,” said the unionists.
Seeing as they couldn’t speak their mind the House, the nurses want the Opposition to ask Prime Minister Robert Fico when he will meet the promise publicly given to the unions on February 5. “Or explain why directors of hospitals in Presov, Zilina and Trnava disobey Robert Fico’s public promise and refuse to rehire the nurses,” say OZ SaPA and SK SaPA.
The nurses pointed out that they decided to embrace the Prime Minister’s call and return to hospitals, but the hospital managements refuse to rehire them, despite the fact that they face staffing shortages. “Instead of highly-qualified nurses, they employ individuals who fail to make even the minimum qualification requirements and are not registered as nurses. This despite the fact that the registration is a lawful requirement, created in order to have the chamber guarantee the quality of nurse work by patients bed,” said the nurses.