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On Friday, the Center Party, the Red Party and the Labor Party declared that they want the Storting’s constitution and control committee to send questions to the Ministry of Health and Care Services about quarantine exemptions for foreign workers.
This comes after Aftenposten revealed on Wednesday the SMS correspondence between Knut E. Sunde in Norwegian industry and Secretary of State Anne Grethe Erlandsen ahead of the decision to grant quarantine waivers to foreign workers this summer.
The SMS correspondence shows that Norsk Industri lobbied the Ministry of Health and Care Services. Aftenposten also documents that the Ministry of Health and Care Services put pressure on the health authorities.
– We are open to this being a question of control. Right now, there are some loose ends, so our people on the control committee will come back to that, Ap’s health policy spokesperson Ingvild Kjerkol tells Dagbladet.
Prepared questions
Eva Kristin Hansen (Labor Party), who is a member of the constitution and control committee, informs Dagbladet that they want clarity about what happened.
– In my opinion, it would be natural for the control committee to start by sending questions to the Ministry of Health and Sanitary Services on this matter. We must be clear about what has happened here, who has made the final decisions and who the government has been in contact with since working life, and how it has happened, he tells Dagbladet and continues:
– We are in favor of having contact with the parties in working life, but it is something completely different from what an employers’ organization dictates. We need to find out what really happened here.
Dagbladet is informed that the Labor Party has prepared a series of questions that it is considering asking the Constitution and Control Committee to send to the Ministry of Health and Care Services. It is emphasized that these questions are preliminary and may change during the process.
Questions to the Control and Constitution Commission
Dagbladet is informed that these are the relevant questions that the Labor Party has prepared. It is noted that they are preliminary and may be modified during the process.
The decision itself:
- Who made the decision to grant the ten-day quarantine exemption for foreign workers on June 22?
- Who made the decision to ignore FHI’s professional assessment on June 15, which cautioned against granting exemptions that opened up to import infection?
- Why were the new rules on the exemption from the ten-day quarantine for foreign workers published before the NIPH, the Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Ministry dealt with them?
- Was an assessment made of the negative consequences as a result of the closure, outbreak management and national measures against the benefits of a 10-day quarantine for foreign workers and can it be referred to the committee?
- What was the reason that the ten-day quarantine exemption for foreign workers was made so broad that it applied to all industries?
The consequences:
- What concrete steps did the government take to prevent the spread of imports to the local population when it opened to exemption from the ten-day quarantine for foreign workers on June 22?
- What steps did the government take to prepare Norwegian municipalities to deal with increasing import infections as a result of the exemption from the 10-day quarantine for foreign workers?
- Did the government receive warnings about increased import contagion related to the exemption for foreign labor before November 5?
Will turn every stone
Rødt’s leader, Bjørnar Moxnes, informs Dagbladet that they have also prepared a series of questions that they want the Constitution and Control Committee to send to the Ministry of Health and Care Services.
Here, the government has put the profits of business owners before infection control, life and health and has opened the borders to imports of labor from highly infected countries. Now we must turn every stone and put all the facts on the table, says Moxnes to Dagbladet and continues:
– The NHO Employers Association has a direct line to the Conservative government that others can only dream of. We demand full transparency about the contact between NHO and the government, as the government ignored the advice of health professionals and changed the quarantine rules at the request of business owners.
