Aiono: No salary hikes to keep nurses in Samoa

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The new Director General of the Ministry of Health, has admitted the government will not entertain increasing nurses salaries to keep them from leaving for work overseas.

Aiono Dr. Alec Ekeroma told the Samoa Observer that most likely the main reason for nurses leaving, is that there’s more money to be made overseas with seasonal work schemes; and there’s the excitement as well with travel.

“And also you cannot beat an offer from, for example, Australia, whereby you can walk in and work in each home, you can earn far more than what you earn in Samoa and in three years, you can take your family with you and you can apply for permanent residence.”

The DG said, “If you’re a young nurse, that would be very attractive so it’s very hard to fight against that, so we need to look at retention strategies as to how we can retain our staff to stop our doctors and nurses from working overseas.”

Aiono emphasized that the brain drain challenge is not limited to Samoa, but to the rest of the Pacific island countries as well.

He added that it’s something that needs to be prioritized including strategies to improve salaries of the health employees.

“There’s no way the government would approve salaries for the nurses, but we especially need to look at other ways of enticing nurses to stay back, especially the young ones,” he said.

According to the health chief, part of his retainment strategies will include proper discussions with the leaders of the nursing fraternity to identify and understand what needs to be done.