The Health Services Section of the Union Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM) yesterday signed an agreement with the government whereby work conditions of nursing aides, health assistants, care workers and assistant care workers employed by the government are to be substantially improved.

By means of this agreement, all these workers are to start benefiting from an allowance which will total e1,150 (around Lm495) a year. This means a raise of Lm300 a year, with retroactive effect from 1 October last year, for those workers who until today used to benefit from an allowance reaching Lm195 a year (Category A).

The workers who until today used to benefit from an allowance of Lm117 and Lm52 a year (Categories B and C respectively) will be given the opportunity so that within 15 days, they enter Category A and thus they too will start to benefit from the higher allowance of e1,150.

This process must be concluded by no later than three months from the signing of the agreement.

Also by means of this agreement, the assistant care workers will start to benefit from an allowance for the first time.

With this agreement, the UHM is going to have successfully concluded no less than 20 sectoral agreements which cover hundreds of workers in various sectors in the public service.

On the part of UHM, the agreement was signed by Joe Bonello, Secretary, Health Services Section.