Monrovia – While health workers at Liberia largest referral hospital rant about the cut in their salaries, the focal person of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning for the salary harmonization scheme has claimed that no health workers was affected by the process.
Del-Francis Wreh told a news briefing at the Ministry of Information on Thursday, September 12, that health workers are “more dedicated” public servants and their contributions to society provide room for their protection from the harmonization exercise.
“Nurses at JFK told us the other day that each of them attends to about 30 patients a day. So the kind of work that all of these people do make the policy to protect them from receiving a downward adjustment or cut in their salaries,” he said.
But the health workers reacted later the same day [Thursday] maintaining that the Liberian dollars portion of their salaries were cut and government is making no efforts to reimburse said amount.
The reaction from health workers of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center comes as an affirmation to a statement they released last week to complain about their salaries’ deducted.
They also threatened to mobilize other health practitioners across the country if the deduction is not reimbursed.
According to them, their salaries were reduced to more than half after receiving a text message on Wednesday, September 4.
“If there is no redress to this matter, nurses and doctors working at JFK will stay away from wok until our monies are repaid,” one of the health workers said.
“You can touch other health workers, but when you touch one health worker, you will be touching all and we are working overtime and yet still they are reducing the little amount we are getting. Government said it was going to harmonize salary, if so, health workers supposed to receive increment rather than reduction, because we are working overtime.”
They gave government up to Wednesday, September 11, 2019 to give their US Dollars portion of the salary along with the amount they claimed was taken from their Liberian dollar salary.
The reduction of the health workers’ salary comes in the wake of ongoing salary harmonization by the government. Government says the process is intended to give public servants their just benefits in line with the work they do.
But Mr. Wreh, who serves as Executive Director of the Liberia Microeconomic Policy Analysis Center, said health workers were among others employees protected from the exercise.
He also mentioned teachers, professors, security sector employees and Foreign Service employees are exempted.
He stated that contrary to reduction as claimed by the health workers, there was an increment in their “excess pay” above what they previously received.
“If a BSc holder is receiving US$185.00, we raised that amount under the harmonization to US$ 225.00, so instead of reduction they received increment,” Wreh noted.
He said the harmonization process affects accountants, economists or procurement directors who are considered specialists within these protected ministries and agencies.
The exercise affected them because they are not providing the kind of services like public servants who the harmonization protects, Wreh said, adding that those who claimed that there were reductions in their salaries might have being affected by cut in taxes and social security contributions.
“They said they still getting small money or they are not getting the same money they used to get, it’s true and it is not harmonization problem. After harmonization, you must pay your taxes,” he said.
“So, if someone was not affected by the harmonization but received low salary, it is because of the way the taxes are being calculated now.
“The way the taxes were calculated in the past was totally not correct because in taxation, the issue of fairness is important and under this organized system, we combined the two pays.”
However, the President of the health workers at the JFK, Nicolas Koffa has described Mr. Wreh statement as a “cover-ups and far from reality”.
“If health workers were being protected, why the team came at JFK, and even if taxes were deducted, our salaries would not have been badly affected like the way it is,” Koffa said.
“What that man is saying is a makeup because they have already caused a problem for health workers.”
At the same time, Mr. Koffa said nurses and doctors at JFK are still complaining and are intending to take action if nothing is done to reimburse their monies.