6 months of unpaid work
According to the complaint, for the past 6 months, doctors and staff at Phuoc Long District Medical Center have not been paid their basic salary and shift allowance. Technical fees have also not been paid for 15 months. Doctors and medical staff here have petitioned the center's leadership, but have not received any response or solution so far.
“As medical staff, we always try our best to take care of people’s health, especially during the recent difficult period. However, the Center’s failure to ensure basic rights has put us in a difficult situation and made us lose peace of mind at work,” said an indignant employee.
Speaking with Lao Dong, Dr. Tran Van Sua - Director of Phuoc Long District Medical Center - confirmed that the contents reflected in the petition of medical staff at the Center were correct. Dr. Sua informed that the situation of unpaid wages and allowances had been going on for many years, but by 2024 it had become more serious. To have money to pay his colleagues, he had to do everything possible.
“The Center has continuously reported this situation to leaders at all levels. Currently, to have funds to pay salary arrears to employees, the Center has requested an advance of about 5 billion VND from the budget to pay salaries for August and September 2024,” said Dr. Sua, and at the same time hoped that staff and workers would share the difficulties with the board of directors.
There is no way out yet.
Explaining the issue of unpaid wages and other allowances, the leader of Phuoc Long District Medical Center said that this is a common difficulty when the Center is financially autonomous. Accordingly, from August 29, 2019, Phuoc Long District Medical Center is one of three units assigned autonomy, self-responsibility for finance, and self-guaranteeing regular expenditures for the period 2019-2021 according to Decree No. 16/2015/ND-CP.
After 6 months of implementing autonomy, the financial situation is difficult. However, the Center continues to be granted autonomy and self-responsibility according to Decision No. 527/QD-UBND dated December 28, 2023 of the Provincial People's Committee for the period 2023-2025. During the implementation process, in 2022, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, it encountered difficulties due to low medical examination and treatment revenue, the amount exceeding the health insurance budget that has not been accepted for long-term payment, low service revenue, revenue not enough to cover expenses... leading to financial imbalance.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center was seriously degraded and had to be repaired with recovery funds. According to Decision No. 16/2022/QD-TTg, the Center needed VND 36.947 billion in regular expenditure support, but only received VND 15.143 billion. Therefore, the Center had to temporarily borrow from the budget, but could not balance the shortfall of VND 27.530 billion. In addition, the price of medical examination and treatment services has not changed for many years and has not been calculated correctly and fully.
Regarding this situation, the Department of Health of Bac Lieu province said that the Department has repeatedly reported to the People's Committee of Bac Lieu province and the Ministry of Health to remove difficulties and have a support mechanism for autonomous public medical examination and treatment facilities to ensure regular expenses and ensure a part of regular expenses when the revenue is lower than the regular expenses, but has not received positive feedback.
According to the calculation of the Department of Health of Bac Lieu province, the amount of money missing due to salary increase in 2024 from July 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024 is nearly 10.3 billion VND (of which Gia Rai town Medical Center is more than 5.7 billion VND, Phuoc Long district Medical Center is more than 4.5 billion VND).
According to the Department of Health of Bac Lieu province, if difficulties for autonomous units are not promptly resolved, it is likely that these units will continue to face difficulties in the coming time.
* The Director of Phuoc Long District Medical Center said that from January 15-20, 2025, the Social Insurance will advance nearly 10 billion VND for the first quarter of 2025. The Board of Directors plans to use more than 7.5 billion VND to pay salaries for October, November, December and 6 months of on-duty pay. However, this plan is still awaiting comments from the Phuoc Long District Party Committee and People's Committee.
* On January 9, 2025, a leader of the Bac Lieu Provincial People's Committee said that he was aware of the prolonged salary arrears of employees of the Phuoc Long District Medical Center.
In response to the question "When will medical staff at Phuoc Long District Medical Center receive their salaries?", the Director of the Department of Health of Bac Lieu province said that he had worked with the Social Insurance and related units to help Phuoc Long District Medical Center have money to pay salaries to staff before Tet.
