Pivdennoukrainsk Hospital abandons nurse bonuses in favour of electricity payments

Pivdennoukrainsk City General Hospital. Photo: yuzhka.city

In Pivdennoukrainsk, there are plans to reallocate 526,000 hryvnias, which had been earmarked for nurses’ bonuses, towards paying for electricity.

This was discussed at a meeting of the city council’s social affairs committee on 21 October, according to NikVesti.

Councillor Antonina Martynko noted that the finance department had provided her with information regarding unspent funds held by budget administrators. In particular, the municipal hospital had returned 526,868 hryvnias, which had been earmarked for nurses’ bonuses.

However, she was told that the hospital had requested a reallocation of funds, as funding for these expenses had been insufficient at the start of the year. Furthermore, the hospital management decided not to pay bonuses to nurses in order to avoid creating unequal conditions for staff.

«They believe that nurses and other staff have similar salaries. Therefore, they want to avoid any ambiguities. They do not have their own funds to pay other staff members ahead of their professional holidays, so they decided not to pay this bonus to these employees of the organisation,» noted officials from the department.

However, the councillor was outraged by this decision. Antonina Martynko pointed out that during the preliminary discussion of the programme at the session, councillors had agreed to award bonuses to nurses, specifically as an additional incentive for female staff.

«Why mislead councillors by saying: «Yes, everything’s fine, we’re doing it like the primary care sector»? In the end, half a million is being returned, and people haven’t received anything by Nurses’ Day. At every meeting, people are shouting that staff are resigning and that salaries are too low. And indeed, the situation there is truly dire in terms of funding; something isn’t working out with the National Health Service of Ukraine. And yet they won’t even give these 400 hryvnias,» said the councillor.

At the same time, she asked whether the clause on bonuses should be removed if the hospital does not plan to use the funds. In response, the representative from the finance department suggested analysing how the funds under the programme are being used and, based on the results, considering the possibility of making changes.

Consequently, Antonina Martynko asked that Ivan Kukhta, head of the Pivdennoukrainsk Military Administration, be informed of the situation so that the military administration could make changes to the programme.

It should be recalled that earlier, in Pivdennoukrainsk, there were plans to cut the maternity and paediatric wards from September onwards due to the medical facility’s financial difficulties.

After the order was shared on social media, the hospital’s director, Serhiy Lupov, commented on the situation himself. He stated that the decision was not linked to the administration’s desire to cut back on medical care, but rather to the consequences of healthcare reform, the demographic situation and the requirements of the National Health Service of Ukraine.

However, the hospital’s director, Serhii Lupov, refused to take part in the work of a specially formed group set up to find ways out of the crisis at the hospital.

Furthermore, the hospital requested that 8.6 million hryvnias in financial aid, which it had received from the local community on a repayable basis, be written off.

On 3 July, the hospital’s chief medical officer, Serhii Lupov, revoked his order to downsize the maternity and paediatric wards.