Remarks of the Prime Minister Edi Rama during the meeting with nurses where “Nurses for Albania” portal is presented:
The news I have to deliver is very good, we will do the same to nurses like we did with teachers, ultimate salvage from the claws of political parties and guaranteeing any nurse practitioner that no one will ever dismiss tem from their job position due to political reasons, implying that the pan I your field of practice will send to scrapheap.
Starting from today, any nurse recruited within our health system will be only based on merit and individual capabilities as it is repeatedly and routinely occurring with teachers. It would be enough to demand it to the teachers of the children in order to learn this simple truth, teachers themselves could not believe when were told of such a thing and righteously they did not have to. However, despite difficulties and inherited obstacles, we managed to get teachers out of the grip of party interests and not be part of the list of political party’s employment list or parties that came to power.
We enabled an opportunity to all those wanting to be employed as teachers to apply and show their potential contribution values though the same mechanism, the online portal which is an automated and systematic means. Nowadays, teachers’ portal has turned into a widely accepted system which will undergo an ultimate enhamcement in the following weeks since, unlike nurses and further on where position assignment will be more concentrated, in regard to teachers we encountered issues such as temporary contracts and replacements and other in-between procedures facing mishandling. Nonetheless, all teaches selected on “Teachers for Albania” portal are provided with a job positon based on the points gathered and will be there today and tomorrow to give their contribution.
While this will be simplerer with nurses, in the context of guaranteeing full transparency of all assignment procedures as bsed on the testing process each will take relevant points and basedon the score each will find the suited position in the classification scattered according to geographic areas individuals will be alined without transcending ranks in the context of outranking vacancies.
Nowadays, there are 420 vacant positions. We have refused any interventions on fulfilling vacancies from below, sideways and above, since we were preparing to this process. If it were true we did not posses this willingness then there would be no vacant positions to this day. No one ever tackled us, either the law or any major force to make us reject further nurses’ assingments following the new governing process, but our will to not allow the political party recruiting an essential part of healthcare service such as nurses, instead we have to trust this upon those the most capable and awating to work as nurses. Hence to act accordingly, they should be assesst based on merit and their merit is neither appraised by the political party, the fact that they know or do not know the MP or the head of the local political party nor they have acquaintances to a minister’s relative and so forth, but merely based on the testing score held compliant to all published procedures by the Ministry of Health.
It is an enormous relief to me personally because I have witnessed in a number of occasions over the four years, unable to put a halt to injustice within the system due to political balance causes, due to an all parties’ tradition including even the present in-power political party that I lead. It has indeed been a harsh feeling of powerlessness, of weakness and shame where in the face of a legitimate complaint of a 20-years experienced nurse in an “x” hospital, I could not do anything. She is dismissed to be replaced by a freshly-licenced nurse whose merit is known only by the “x” MP of “x” party in the “y” city for “z” hospital. Such cases, scary sometimes, as someone who knows the difference of chalk from cheese is leaving and another that takes chalk for cheese is replacing her, are numerous not isolated to one or two.
What is also important to underline is that this system bolsters inner requirements of the nurses within the system to complete all ongoing education requests, to be always up to the ongoing testing and perform your work with human and professional dignity pristined by no one, for it means to find the right person for the job, not to find the job for a person while it does not matter if the work is done or not.
The experience of “Teacher for Albania” portal is absolutely precious and positive. The portal will transition into a law. Soon, the law will be drafted to Parliament, not only to make any possible violation of dignity, even of a single teacher or of assignments and so on, a violation of the law in motion, but also to turn it into a legal norm throughout the system.
This portal will act similarly. Nurses’ recruitment through a process of knowledge and ability and no one else that could help outrank another unfairly is extremely important to become a legal norm. Like university admissions. Each of your children, attending the first year of university, is due to an investment by the parents, his own abilities and thanks to the fact that outranking has not been allowed by us in the case of being the son of a hospital director or of having the party as incentive to be ranked first. Actually university admissions during this academic year have run smoothly. I mean of zero complaints not even 1%. The process has been entirely automated and transparent. Neither I nor the Minister of Education or the university chancellors had the chance to intervene and establish artificial outranks to anyone.
The same process will take place to nurses. Obviously, there are thousands who linger to enter the job market but however, there are not a thousand vacancies. As we speak, there are 420 vacant positions, but a new history will begin within the Albanian caring system through this first group of nurses as any available position, if someone retires or leaves somewhere else, will be filled automatically by the fisrt in rank endowed of appropriate scoring to fullfil the vacancy.
Public administration yet faces problems nonetheless a new similar scheme has kicked off operating in the Civil Service. It is widely thought that you need money and acquaintances to enter administration. Indeed, there have been, still are and will be unavoidingly unless we do not make the system more contemporary. Therefore, if within the public administration, in the Civil Service of the Republic of Albania, we have 25% of the competitions provide no winners it means that no money or friends? No, in fact it means that the system works.
Civil administration is part of the state’s administration. Another part of the public administration is an issue which we will treat in parts as we already pledged that these four years we will restore all levels of the public administration and any person that deserves to join by merit, its dignity. Efforts are undertaken since the beginning with the scheme of 16 hospital managers across the country. Has it provided us with an utterly satisfactory outcome? For certain reasons, no, but, however, the result is much better than before, imagine if hospitals were separate, this is of one party the other hospital of that party and so on and whether the political party of that hospital lacks a manager they will bring in an agronom to run the hospital only to serve the interests of the party. When the nurse, then goes to the hospital director and seeks something related to nursing, he answers about the grain cob, big deal what is important is the party to have its own people working. This does not happen and will not happen exactly because we want a lot more, both from hospital management and from the management of municipal hospitals – 34 such. Certainly from thedirectors as well, but we are talking about the hospitals, as for hospital executives, we have left 3 months time and within these 3 months, all those who headi hospitals will undergo testing.
Just as we are convinced of the important fact, that we can not have nursing services of a dignified level in health centers, or outpatient clinics, which are catastrophic from the infrastructural point of view. That is why we have a program to finance the full reconstruction of 300 health centers in the Republic of Albania. The first 80 will be done this year and will meet all the standards you have witnessed in Lapraka, Kamza or other reconstructed health centers. They will be reception centers of a primary service that can significantly facilitate the specialized and more complicated service in hospitals.
Salaries increased significantly, first and foremost to nurses. You cheer that whoever works in a health center that is still being reconstructed will be rebuilt, someone working in a re-built health center will rejoice in the reconstruction elsewhere, but it does not add enthusiasm as it would the further increase of salary. So we have programmed a further progressive increase in salaries to nurses, first of all, in the entire system. When we increased salaries, the professors got upset as salaries grew more to the nurses and little for the professors. Professors will be cast down again, but we will continue to increase salaries more to nurses.
While we have some good news to the professors, since there is a thorough lack of specialised physicians in remote areas or even outside Tirana, there is a solution as I said, by equalizing payments or more or less like the salary they would benefit if “fleeing” to Italy or Germany today not considering tax. When I first said it, I was told “it’s not doable” but this is set and starting from this day any specialized physicians willing to work out of Tirana, where specialists are needed and according to specialities will earn up to 250 thousand lek additionally to the base salary in Tirana. The wound opened because of their lack is larger than this amount might sound.
Meanwhile this problem won’t endur endelessly due to another reason. Whatever the reason health specialities were interrupted in 2011 and those who did it, now seek accountability, whereas we started health specializations by preparing all procedures in 2014 and 2015. Some 300 specialists will be ready within a two years span and today’s lack of specialized physicians is less than 100. These are concrete figures, a reality to confront what is said with what is being done. There are still many lacks and to this reason we will place the bonus up to 250 thousand ALL, according to specialists, that there is a salary scale, which, when undertaking to go to Tropoja, Permet, Librazhd, or anywhere else in these areas there can be a real profit. So, it is an internal migration with a profit that is more or less calculated as it would be if he went to Germany or Italy to
I would like to ensure and I am aware we know better, of course after you, than anone else talking about healthcare, the problems this service faces. It is obvious to us thatmore has to be done and to this regard we utterly dissatisfied in relation to the future, but relevant to our starting point we are further ahead than before considering reasonable people look at the facts not the truth reflected by the cauldron. I believe that what we are doing today is an example, which alone is enough because it is not an employment portal issue it is a matter of professional and human dignity. We often get messages, complaints from girls and boys, who have finished nursing and want to get hired and are all in the idea, how do I do this job as this is does not need skills. So, starting from now on this will only be done based on capability, I believe it is a big step forward.
The process of accrediting healthcare institutions, from healthcare centers to university medica centers, will start within this year, an accrediting according to the highest norms and standards, internationally defined and hence we will provide ourselves, first of all, with an objective frame of the entire situation and secondly, the ability to concretely see and do things in relation to the future. But I am confident that a team of doctors, nurses, other medical technical staff, guaranteed that everything under the white coat depends on their merit, professionalism, and dignity in their practice, the era where the political party gives and removes that white coat is long gone. It was so until a few years ago. If it was not so in the few years that we are in power at the University Hospital Center, I assure you that it was so in many other hospitals in Albania until September. If we were today, as we were yesterday, we would not have 420 vacant positions and we would not have anything to post on the portal that these job positions would have been shared not through the portal, but instead nearby to where the political parties are.
We will do our best to make things better, but we are the only guarantee that things are no longer going backwards.
Thank you very much!
