By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
Operations Coordinator at Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Response Center, Steven Gaojia, has revealed that there would be no compensations in the form of benefits or whatsoever to frontline health workers in the fight against Ebola.
Speaking to the journalists yesterday in Freetown, Gaojia explained that that would be the case because most of the workers were volunteers and had been receiving hazard payment or risk allowances whiles performing respective duties.
“Ebola Response workers are mostly volunteers and there was never any contract that said they are employees and they are entitled to benefit at the end the fight,” he said. He added that NERC was only providing the allowances because of the risk that the response workers were taking.
He said paying the risk allowance was a policy agreed to by Ebola affected countries in West Africa together with international partners at a meeting held in Guinea last year.
At that meeting, Gaojia went on, it was agreed that huge amount of hazard incentives should be paid to frontline medics as a way of encouraging them in their work.
He furthered that the government had decided to make weekly payments to the health workers but added that they could no longer sustain it. He pointed out that it was high time some of the frontline workers were laid off and relevant changes made in the health sector as the country was now ahead of the disease.
The NERC operations coordinator stated that the timing was appropriate for a review and proper implementation of the hazard payment policy which he said would take effect in February and end in March. He said they would also initiate an exit strategy to the payments.
He went on that the main beneficiaries would then be those workers in treatment and holding centers, laboratories, screening teams, surveillance, burial teams, non-Ebola health facilities and contact tracers.
Gaojia said that payment of frontline workers range from support staff to frontline medical health workers.
“All members of burial teams would be paid five hundred thousand a week because of the risk involved,” he added.
Meanwhile, he went on to state, NERC had initiated a new payment scheme for retainer-health workers working in empty Ebola treatment centers. He said they would still be paid even though they were not receiving or treating any Ebola patients and they seem to be doing nothing.
© Politico 29/01/15
