Gavrankapetanović decides: General Hospital employees to receive full salary during isolation and treatment

(Patria) - Ismet Gavrankapetanović, acting director of the General Hospital “Prim.dr. Abdulah Nakaš”, has decided that the hospital will cover the full salary for all General Hospital employees who fall ill or go into isolation, as according to the Law on Protection of the Population from Infectious Diseases, these funds are to be reimbursed to the hospital from the Budget.

“There were two key reasons for this decision. First, because it is not fair to use people, have them commit, expose themselves to illness, and then when they get sick, they are left alone and their salary is reduced. Where else would a healthcare worker get sick than at their workplace. An important feeling is that people are not alone.

The second reason is that in this case, when you protect people, they will immediately report their contacts and thus protect themselves, their families, and the hospital. If you take from their salary, and these are difficult times, they might hide their contacts and illness because they know they will have a harder time feeding their families,” Gavrankapetanović told Patria.

Sebija Izetbegović, director of KCUS, does not like this decision, so inspections are constantly being carried out and the General Hospital is being fined.

Otherwise, the Trade Union of Nurses and Technicians of Sarajevo Canton (SSMSITKS), which brings together about 700 members, has sent an appeal to all healthcare institutions and their managers to pay full personal income to healthcare employees who are on sick leave and in isolation due to suspected coronavirus.

Given the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been ongoing for eight months, and healthcare workers are exhausted and most exposed to infection, the Union believes that the authorities in all healthcare institutions should follow the example of JU General Hospital “Prim. dr. Abdulah Nakaš”, which has been paying salaries in full since the beginning of the pandemic, and therefore these payments have been made retroactively for employees for whom this was not done earlier.

SSMSITKS emphasizes that every day in the conditions of the epidemic presents a special challenge for engaged medical workers and other healthcare employees.
In such circumstances, they say, all medical staff are in a state of constant and intense psychophysical exertion and constant danger of infection, so the aforementioned proposal to pay full personal income in a situation where an employee is forced to go on sick leave due to the mentioned circumstances is completely justified.