8 hours Ago
State health services organisation (Okypy) chief executive officer Kypros Stavrides on Monday defended the delay in his organisation’s submission of its annual budget to parliament and the work of his organisation’s leadership, amid harsh criticism from the House health committee. “It is a fact that the budget should be handed over in a timelier fashion, but we as an organisation have developed a plan of action which must be signed off on by both the finance ministry and the health ministry. That action plan is so in-depth and so detailed that handing over the budget earlier could not happen,” he told CyBC radio.
He added that the action plan centres on “ensuring the organisational and economic autonomy of Okypy”, and that he and the rest of Okypy’s leadership are “working very hard” to ensure Okypy’s independence. “The samples of our work that we have submitted are evidence of our suitability to lead Okypy,” he added. On the criticism he and his organisation has faced, he said, “we did not expect to be faced with such vehemence”.
“Good-faith criticism is of course welcome, but what was said was somewhat unjustified,” he said. House health committee chairman and Disy MP Efthymios Diplaros had last week called on Okypy’s leadership to “wake up”. “If they don’t, or if they’re simply incompetent, they should tender their resignations and let others take over .
.. We feel that unfortunately state hospitals are being led to collapse and a sellout [to private interests].
We cannot stand idly by and be silent while this happens...
some will be judged by history, by what we did at the critical time,” he said. He went on to speak of a budget of “billions of euros” while at the same there was a “sharp decline” in the quality of healthcare services provided. He also criticised Okypy’s €115 million annual operating loss, though Stavrides on Monday said that “concerns capital and development expenditures”.
Diplaros was not alone in offering harsh words for the current state of Okypy, with Akel MP Marina Nicolaou saying the discussion demonstrated yet again that the current board of Okypy “are not up to the task”. She pointed fingers at Health Minister Michael Damianos and President Nikos Christodoulides for the shortcomings she had identified, saying Christodoulides had “refused to sit down with Akel to discuss possible solutions”. “Akel shall continue to defend public healthcare and public hospitals, fighting those who wish to sell it out, to privatise it and to alter the philosophy of the general healthcare system,” she said.
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