MoH freezes domestic health checks – ‘Center head cause of delay in work’
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KUWAIT CITY, Nov 8, (KUNA): The Ministry of Health has stopped medical examinations of domestic workers when renewing their residences until new health centers are inaugurated, said a senior MoH official on Tuesday.
Freezing the medical examinations of domestic workers is a step towards finalizing a strategy for this dossier, Assistant Undersecretary for Public Health Dr Majda Al- Qattan told KUNA in a statement.
The move will give an opportunity to the ministry to complete installation of equipment and be logistically ready to receive large numbers of medical examiners, she added.
The new centers, which are going to be opened soon, will be established in accordance with the state-of-the-art equipment, so as to facilitate and organize examinations that are considered the pillars of health security because they contribute to protecting families from diseases, she noted.
Meanwhile, Interior Ministry’s Director General of Residency Affairs Major General Talal Marafi stressed in a press statement that the huge number of domestic workers led to the halt of medical examinations by the MoH, with the aim of providing further preparations and requirements.
Dictatorial behaviour: staff
Some 20 male and female employees at the Expatriate Workers Medical Test Center in Fahaheel protested against what they called despotism on the part of head of the center and his interference in the administrative prerogatives of employees.
The employees complained that head of the center started the action by removing tubes used for collecting blood samples from laboratory to his office. He allegedly interferes in other aspects of administration arbitrarily to the point of treating employees as marginal.
They indicated the aftermath of his actions is massive congestion and messy state of affairs at the center. He declared that several complaints were lodged against the senior official for disrupting the workflow and keeping blood test tubes for expatriate workers inside his office.
He pointed out that the problem led to delay in completing transactions, indicating the act of keeping the tubes almost delays part of the work for each day.
He further explained that the center used to attend to around 600-700 expatriates daily but it reduced to about 250-300. He stressed that his role as secretary of the center has been usurped with the issuance of series of circulars without his knowledge, while health inspectors are assigned administrative duty against regulations.
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