Deserving health care staff get contagious disease allowance

The Ministry of Health has implemented a new regulation that provides compensation for thousands of employees in health care professions who deal with contagious diseases and hazardous working environments.
“The Ministry of Health has identified 30,000 health workers eligible to receive an allowance for dealing with contagious diseases in the course of their work and has sent their details to the Civil Service Council to issue the required decrees for the payment of the compensation within two months,” an informed source at the ministry said.
The source added that the terms and conditions in the new regulation disqualified 20,000 health workers, who had been previously receiving the allowance.
Dr. Sabah Abu Zanadah, head of the international nursing council, told Arab News that those included in the hazard allowance were medical staff. “They earned the allowance when they where practicing their job as health workers and when they moved to administrative positions they kept receiving the payment, which is illegal,” she said.
The ministry discovered in January that more than 20,000 officials at some administration offices were receiving the allowance even though they did not interact with people suffering from contagious diseases, since their work is confined to offices.
A committee comprising ministry officials drafted a document that stipulates the conditions that make a health worker eligible for receiving the allowance and identified such employees.
The new regulation, which has been approved by the ministry and circulated to all the provincial directorates before it was submitted to the Civil Service Council, has eliminated any loopholes in the system, the source added.
Abdullah Al-Asiri, director general of the Department for Combating Contagious Diseases at the ministry, said the new regulations brought all health care practitioners and those who are working in health institutions within the allowance scheme. 
They also cover lab technicians and sterilization staff as well as nurses and health assistants. In addition, nurses in intensive care units and emergency wards, kidney dialysis units and isolation wards are also covered by the scheme.