Government un happy with public workers working culture

Government un happy with public workers working culture

Kaoma, March 7, ZANIS ———Western Province Permanent Secretary, Emmanuel Mwamba has implored the medical personnel at Kaoma district hospital to put more efforts to the services rendered to the community in the district.

Mr Mwamba was saddened when he met several patients in long queues without being attended to by the health personnel after spending more than five to six hours at the only main hospital in Kaoma district.

This came to light when the Permanent Secretary toured the hospital yesterday to find out the challenges that members of staff were facing in executing their duties at the hospital.

Mr Mwamba said the working culture of most health workers at the institution should change immediately so that patients receives the best care from all the employees at the hospital.

He complained that patients should not be kept for longer periods of time in the queues as government’s motive was to ensure that all patients received the necessary medication they deserved on time.

But both District Medical Officer, Richard Sakala and Provincial Medical Officer, Albert Sitali said the long queues were caused by the high number of people in the district as the population of Kaoma has increased tremendously in the recent past.

Dr Sitali said the ratio at the moment stood at one nurse to 500 patients in the district adding that their wish was to see a situation where the patients and nurse ratio is narrowed so that people do not complain.

“We would love to have more health personnel but at the moment what we have is not enough”, he said.

Dr Sitali requested government through the Permanent Secretary to consider employing more health personnel at the institution so that the impact of long queues is minimized at Kaoma district hospital.

And Mr Mwamba has appealed to all the patients to be calm as government was looking into the issue of employing more health workers adding that patients should not be in the habit of beating up members of staff as reported in some sections of the media saying health workers were working under difficult conditions.

Mr Mwamba said soon the situation would change as PF government was keen to improving the health sector in the country.