Doctors of Covid-19 treatment centers without salaries

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KABUL (Pajhwok): The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has acknowledged the complaints from doctors of Covid-19 treatment centers about their salaries, saying the ministry is talking with donor organizations for attracting fund for these centers.

According to Pajhwok Afghan News, doctors in Daikundi and Nimroz provinces are complaining about non-payment of their salaries.

Daikundi doctors said they had shared their problems with provincial public health department who assured them that the issue would be shared with the central government.

In a letter, the complaining doctors said, “The health services implementation organization in Daikundi, MOF, has not paid salaries to 100 staff members of the Covid-19 project, for the months of August, September, October, November and December as the project has stopped.”

On the other hand, doctors in Nimroz province say that despite complaints to the province’s public health department, they did not receive any response so far.

However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, JavedHajir, told Pajhwok that the main reason for not paying the salaries of health workers was lack of support from donor organizations.

“Currently we only have donors for five Covid-19 centers, hospitals in other provinces are run without donor support,” he said.

He added that Nangarhar, Herat, Helmand, Kandahar and Kabul are the provinces that have the support of donors.

Among the mentioned provinces, the Afghan-Japanese Hospital in Kabul is funded by WHO and the hospitals of four other provinces are funded by IOM.

Hajir said that currently only 15 of total 38 Covid-19 hospitals were active in the country and only three of nine private hospitals were treating the virus.

He added that non-payment of salaries to the doctors was not a new problem, but it existed even three months before the fall of the previous government and the donor, the World Bank, was yet to pay doctors’ wages.

Referring to the Geneva meeting last February which was also attended by public health minister, he said that IFRC during the meeting had promised to fund Covid-19 response centers in provinces of Afghanistan.

He said that the salaries problem would persist until donors provide support for Covid-19 response centers.

Funding Covid-19 response centers were neither included in the budget of the previous government nor the current government and salaries for the personnel in this area were paid by foreign organizations, he said.

On the other hand, he criticized international organizations supporting the health sector in Afghanistan and said these organizations had always claimed that they had nothing to do with politics, which he added they never acted on their slogans.

Hajir called on all international organizations and foundations to support Afghanistan’s health sector in the times of crisis.

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