Saskatchewan’s health sciences union says it can’t understand why two employees in the Mamawetan Churchill River Health Region have received layoff notices.
According to HSAS, a sexual wellness and smoking prevention worker have been terminated by the northern health region.
HSAS President Karen Wasylenko says both employees were providing much needed services in the health region.
“So we’re talking about people who were involved in educating the public about facilitating and educating about testing for STDs, or educating and testing concerning pregnancy, working on smoking cessation,” she says.
Wasylenko adds a recent survey conducted by the union shows only 33.5 per cent of residents polled gave Saskatchewan health regions a high rating in terms of services delivered.
“People are having a lack of confidence in the way the health regions are handling these situations and how they’re handing the delivery of health care and here once again, we see it once more.”
The survey also found only 21.1 per cent of residents expressed high confidence that health regions are improving on the delivery of services.
Wasylenko says HSAS has still not received an official reason from the region as to why the workers were laid off.
Health region CEO Andrew McLetchie says eliminating those two positions last year was not done because of financial constraints.
McLetchie says the changes were made after the delivery of services was assessed:
“We didn’t feel the services were meeting the needs of the public in a way that we felt was as good as it could be. And when we evaluated it and said, ‘What’s the best way to provide this service?’, we decided that there were other services in our region that could fill the gap more than adequately.”
McLetchie says smoking prevention is covered by addctions workers and sexual wellness is the responsibility of public health nurses.
The Mamawetan Churchill River Health Region serves 23,000 residents in the northeastern part of the province.