Praneeta Prakash 
The Ministry of Health says long-term, sustainable changes need to happen in order to retain medical staff, as the ministry lost 807 nurses last year.
Permanent Secretary Doctor James Fong says despite mobilizing overtime pay, mobilizing meal allowances, and right-sizing the amount of work carried out by nurses, they continue to lose staff.
“There has to be some long-term sustainable changes that have to happen, and that includes ongoing training, retraining, and looking at remuneration packages; all those are longer-term things we have to get in place. Some of them do involve a level of investment that requires some guardedness, some framework around how we are going to source that investment, and we will need to talk to the Ministry of Economy, which we are doing at the moment.”
Dr. Fong says they are also focusing on the retraining and upskilling of staff.
He says the ministry is also considering benefits for those in the nursing profession.
“We believe have more sustainable plans in those areas but the bigger area that requires a lot of work is training, retraining and the remuneration packages.”
Doctor Fong adds that discussions are also underway with developing partners on job training strategies.
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