Employees of the Maternal Child Health Program, the federally funded program which has been riddled with fiscal management problems and personnel issues since last year have not been paid for two pay periods now.
As listeners will recall all of the employees in this program save a few were released last year when the federal grantor froze the funds and demanded a corrective action plan to rectify findings of an audit that the feds carried out of the program.
A few months ago, most of the employees were recalled back to work as they had been promised, along with some new hires.
The program, according to employees who spoke with KHJ News was working fine and last week, Congresswoman Aumua Amata announced news that the program, administered by DOH was receiving a $1 million grant from the federal grantor, Health Resources and Services Administration.
The mother of one employee related that this payweek is the second payperiod that her daughter, a mother of two, has not been paid.
This was confirmed by a senior employee at DOH who works in another division and an employee of the program.
The mother said the employees were told to be patient that the delay was due to paperwork.
The mother said when she called the Governor’s Chief of Staff Fiu Johnny Saelua to please help get paychecks for the employees, Fiu assured his help and said a few other people had called about the same thing.
But the calls to the Governor’s Office for help became the subject of a meeting that the supervisor for the program called.
At the meeting, the employees were questioned as to who contacted the Governor’s Office, that this was an internal matter and the employees should know that the department was doing everything it could to get them paid.
The mother said it’s so very well for the supervisor and DOH management to say that but for people like her daughter who depends on her paycheck to feed her two children, they want to see the green, not empty promises.
As of yesterday, the employees were still waiting for their paychecks.
Emails were sent to DOH Director Motusa Tuileama Nua and the DOH Deputy Director of Nursing Margaret Sesepasara who oversess the program with a copy to media officer Fatima Langkilde, but as of this morning they have not responded.
