Doctors resisting roster changes

Health Minister Louis Deguara said yesterday that problems regarding the manning of health centres by doctors could be solved if doctors accepted a change in their roster.

Dr Deguara told Noel Farrugia (MLP) in reply to a parliamentary question that it did not make sense to have the same number of doctors working at night in health centres as during the day, when the workload was far heavier during the day.

The doctors, however, were refusing to accept a change in their roster.

Dr Deguara said the local councils of Birkirkara and the three cities had offered to engage their own doctors to work at health centres. The Health Department had said that should the councils manage to recruit doctors, the department would be able to issue the same pay as given to the other doctors in health centres.

Dr Deguara observed that should the councils offer better pay to the doctors they recruit, that would lead to a situation where the government-employed doctors in health centres would resign so that they could be re-engaged under better pay.

The issue and other aspects of the problem were still under discussion with a doctors` cooperative that was interested in running health centres and the doctors` union.

He said that although 50 doctors would graduate this year, priority would be given to the needs of St Luke`s Hospital.