The Allied Health Care Workers Union (AHCWU) is requesting that the government take immediate action to address the shortage of health workers.
The AHCWU expressed its disappointment with the health sector in Malta. It added that this mainly has to do with the shortage of nurses and senior health carers.
It stated that this shortage is causing multiple issues in the workplace in all hospitals, elderly homes and clinics.
Furthermore, it references the significant increase in the population, which has put a lot of pressure on the current workers who cannot cater for the full current population. Therefore, there is obviously going to be a decrease in the quality of the health sector, it said.
The AHCWU further expressed that one cannot expect the quality of health service to be high when there are only one or two nurses taking care of a large number of patients.
It further stated that the shortage is leaving patients unsupervised because they would be doing other work.
It praised the carers for all the important work that they do, even though they do not have the capacity to help everyone.
Additionally, the union brought up the issue that the Maltese language is quite an issue for some of the elderly. Some nurses and carers are not capable of communicating in Maltese properly, the union said.
AHCWU expressed how these health workers should be given lessons to learn how to communicate in Maltese.