Health care graduates in limbo as division studies staffing levels

About 50 former students of the Institute of Health Care are still jobless after they were not recruited by the government due to budget cuts.

The graduates, who completed Bachelor of Science courses in radiography, speech and language therapy, medical laboratory and physiotherapy in July 2004 are still without a reply as to whether they will be employed by the Health Division.

Unemployed health care professionals told The Times that when they started the course it went unquestioned that they would get a job with the Health Division as they had been told there was "a great need for healthcare professionals in the health sector".

Whereas students normally received a stipend of Lm64 every four weeks, students in these courses had a stipend of Lm81. This was considered as an incentive for more science students to opt for these courses, where there had been a gap.

Contacted, health director general Ray Busuttil said an exercise of re-evaluating the staffing levels was still going on but he did not indicate when the process would be concluded.

Dr Busuttil said the process was not easy since the division was evaluating the manning levels needed at St Luke's Hospital while keeping Mater Dei Hospital in mind.

"Health care professionals were automatically recruited by the government at a time when there was a shortage," he said, explaining that professions had eventually become saturated.

But the graduates claimed that their only chance for employment was with the Health Division because the private sector never employed inexperienced health care professionals even because they employed Health Division radiographers on a part-time basis.

Dr Busuttil said all health care professionals were certified by the councils of their respective professions and therefore could work anywhere. It was the private sector that was using experience as an excuse in this case, he said.

Doctors, he explained, had to work for two years under supervision before they could be warranted and that was the reason why they were immediately employed, as opposed to other health care professionals.

John Briffa, health services section secretary of the Union Haddiema Maghqudin, said the graduates had been told since the beginning that they would be employed, even if the government had decided not to employ more people due to financial problems.

The UHM was insisting that the government should recruit these professionals.

"We submitted a number of reasons why these graduates should be employed," Mr Briffa said, explaining that some Health Division professionals worked reduced hours while others were taking up a lot of overtime because there weren't enough workers and some were also on maternity leave.

Mr Briffa said the matter possibly boiled down to a problem of finances and a government decision not to recruit more people.