Ashok Shankar: Public Service Association health sector lead on Health NZ slashing over 1400 more jobs

There's fears of potential flow-on effects from more cost-cutting at Health New Zealand.

The Public Service Association says the health agency is cutting a net 1478 roles, with about 700 already vacant.

Health NZ says it's spending more than it has in its budget - and these savings will strengthen its front-line.

PSA health sector lead, Ashok Shankar, says these cuts will impact Health New Zealand's digital team.

He explained not having these workers could lead to more outages and less data and information.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So howth New Zealand is cutting jobs and it's predicted
that the number will set it around fifteen hundred. Now
it itself hasn't confirmed the number, but the PSA, which
is the union, reckons that's about right. And Ashok and
Shanka from the union is with.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Us now a shock. Hello, hi, he how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm very well?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
So, if I'm right, we already have seven hundred vacancy,
So we're really talking about cuts of about eight hundred jobs.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Is that right? Absolutely? Yes, that's about right yet.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Okay, and the digital team, this seems like half the
digital team is being cut. And what's that? That's like
eleven hundred people or something that are you surprised how
big that team is?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
The size of the team is two thousand, four hundred
and five. That's the exact number, is that not quite?
One thousand? Absolutely? One thousand, one hundred and twenty of
the drolls go yeah, obviously off that one thousand, one
hundred and twenty four hundred and sixty four were vacant rolls. Yeah,

(00:59):
but there were numbers less roles that they had chosen
not to fill.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm raising us with you because I want you to
convince me that you need two thousand and four hundred
digital guys in house New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
And we do at the moment with the type of
IT system we've got. As you know, we have inherited
a IT system from twenty districts and when New Zealand
Health was formed, another seven agencies joined it together, and

(01:32):
so you have twenty seven different IT systems. These systems
are not national systems. They don't talk to each other,
They do their own things. They have to be maintained.
There are legacy systems. They have not been updated for
a number of years and it doesn't seem like that
they will be updated in any anytime soon. So just

(01:54):
to maintain them and to make them do what they
need to do, you need this people to actually support it.
And we are really really worried about what this cut
is going to do.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
If these people are cut and we hire doctors and
nurses instead, would you complain about that or would you
be okay with the doctors?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
No? I mean if absolutely, we would always welcome more. However,
for nurses and doctors to do their work, they need
to have people who can support them, who can provide
the data, the information, the it systems. If doctors and
nurses can work without that, it'd be great, wouldn't that.
But in the modern healthcare doesn't work like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, hey, thanks Ashok. I really appreciated Ashok Shanka, who
is from the Public Service Association. For more from Hither
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