PREPARATORY work on the National Health Scheme (NHS) will be paid for entirely from Health or Finance Ministry funds provided in the state budget, Health Minister Frixos Savvides said yesterday.
The government’s proposal on the plan is set to appear before the House plenum this afternoon. Over the last week, it has undergone several amendments in efforts to find public consensus on the matter and avert any more civil service strikes.
The minister’s comments followed the announcement on Tuesday that the government would not take any public contributions to the scheme until it was ready to deliver services, in approximately five years’ time.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Savvides said: “All the overheads and funding needed to set up the organisation of the National Health Scheme, rents salaries etc, will be funded by government money.
“We will only start getting the income drawn from people’s salaries once the plan is ready to deliver.”
Savvides said that a five-year timetable had been drawn up for the plan’s implementation, but that that it could be ready before that date.
The minister was unable to give an exact figure on how much the scheme would cost to set up, he said it would not be a significant amount.
“We are talking about basic overheads, the salaries of administrative staff and things like that.”
He said that what was most significant was that the money would be paid from state coffers, “whether it is calculated into the Budget of the Health Ministry or the Finance Ministry.”
The Health Ministry’s budget this year was £1.35 million.
The Minister also insisted that other health projects would not be sacrificed to pay for the setting up of the plan.
The Health Ministry’s decision to amend the bill and delay public payments until the scheme was up and running came after the government on Monday agreed to exempt civil servants and bank and electricity authority employees from paying until then.
The agreement came amid efforts to avert a 48-hour strike threatened by public service and banking unions, who feared they would lose out on benefits provided by their own schemes. The government insists they will continue to enjoy any extra benefits they receive from their current schemes.
Under the proposed scheme, all employees would contribute two per cent of their wages to the plan. The employer would contribute a further 2.55 per cent and 4.5 per cent would be footed by the state.
The government will be presenting the bill to the House Health Committee today and hopes to have a plenum vote on the matter this afternoon.
If the bill does not appear before the plenum today, the government hopes it will appear by April 19, the plenum’s last session before it dissolves ahead of the May parliamentary elections.
Only DIKO still opposes the scheme, while AKEL has asked for two amendments to be included in the proposal. Their demands are for employees’ contribution to be reduced and for representatives of the public to be present on the board set up to co-ordinate the scheme.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
