More “vacancy control measures” and this time its specialist hospital cleaners on the chopping block

Make no mistake, “vacancy control” means job cuts.

The vacancy control committee will soon be cutting two full-time infection control cleaning positions from the Royal Hobart Hospital.

The jobs in question are required for performing infection control or ‘terminal’ cleans which are deep cleans immediately after a room or treatment point has been used by somebody with COVID or another infectious disease.

These cleaners are crucial to our health service, their jobs are specialist in nature and removing them will have significant negative consequences for hospital operations. Beds will have to remain closed until the specialist cleaning has been completed, and with the work force cut in half, beds will simply be closed longer.

Cutting infection control cleaners will negatively impact patient flow, increase bed block and ratchet up the pressure on a health system already at breaking point.

The Tasmanian health system is exactly that, a system that works collectively to deliver a service to patients in need.

Cutting a piece of that system will have a detrimental effect on the whole – patients are ultimately the ones who will pay the price for the Liberal-Lambie Coalition cuts.

Ella Haddad MP
Shadow Minister for Health