The Government of the PP in the Balearic Islands eliminates the requirement of Catalan for health personnel

2023-08-28 21:25:28

The Government of Beleares, chaired by the PP with the parliamentary support of Vox, has issued a decree law that eliminates the obligation to prove a Catalan title as a requirement to work as a health worker on the Islands. In this way, the Executive chaired by the ‘popular’ Margalida Prohens puts an end to this controversial requirement that had been established by the previous socialist government of Francina Armengol and made up of PSOE, Podemos and Més per Mallorca.

In this way, and from now on, an accredited command of the Catalan language will not be a requirement, but only a merit to obtain a sanitary position, be it a doctor or a nurse.

To make this possible, the regional Executive will modify Law 4/2016 on linguistic training measures, which regulates the requirements for knowledge of the Catalan language in the Health Service. “In this way, the selection processes and the provision of personnel with health functions will allow access to the best qualified professionals, without the lack of official accreditation of a certain level of Catalan becoming a dissuasive element when accessing “, they have assured from the Ministry of Health.

A way to attract health workers

With this measure, a “strategy for recruiting and retaining health professionals” in the words of Prohens, it seeks to combat the deficit of professionals suffered by the Balearic Health. A lack of personnel that is especially relevant in certain areas and islands of the community and that will now be classified as areas “of difficult or very difficult coverage”, pointed out the government spokesman, Antoni Costa.

Said zones will be detailed and will be legally regulated. In them, toilets will receive higher compensation, since they will have economic supplements designed to attract healthcare professionals. Specifically, the Government of Prohens is studying granting aid and supplements that will range from 4,800 to 6,600 euros per year to those nurses and doctors who come to work in those areas that are very difficult to cover.

“We want to do everything possible so that health professionals have linguistic knowledge in Catalan and we will try by all means to facilitate it, but we do not want there to be an exclusive requirement,” Costa stated. Thus, despite suppressing the Catalan requirement, access to and attendance at Catalan language courses will be facilitated, all with the aim of “providing citizens with the right to use either of the two official languages ​​in their relations with the Administration”.

Vox celebrates the measure

For her part, Idoia Ribas, spokesperson for the Vox parliamentary group, has celebrated that the Government has eliminated the requirement of Catalan in Health. In addition, she wanted to highlight the role of her party in this decision by pointing out that it is “thanks, without a doubt, to the fact that Vox has enabled and demanded the implementation of this measure as a priority to agree on the formation of the Government “.

Ribas has celebrated that “this nonsense (the Catalan requirement) is now history” and that, thanks to that, the Government “is no longer hostage to the whims of the separatists and fanatics who led this community to have an unacceptable deficit of healthcare professionals”.

“All professionals who have suffered linguistic discrimination in the Balearic Islands should know that the era of imposition and injustice has ended,” said Ribas, the Vox spokesperson, before recalling that this has been possible “thanks to the agreement that was established between PP and Vox to form the Government”.