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RACE: Aps Ingvild Kjerkol. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB scanpix
The news that Norwegian municipalities will no longer receive aid from the national emergency reserves and will instead have to build their own reserves, makes the opposition in the Storting look red.
– The government abandons responsibility in the midst of a pandemic. Our national emergency preparedness before March was not maintained, and it is strange that Høie is now insisting on implementing the system in which 365 municipalities will do everything themselves, Labor Party health policy spokesperson Ingvild Kjerkol tells VG .
– The government is planning a black money game, where the municipalities end up as losers.
Promote proposals in the Storting
On Saturday, VG wrote that Norwegian municipalities spent 350 million on infection control equipment during the first two months of the corona pandemic.
Only 15 municipalities inform VG that they received the equipment they needed from the national emergency arsenal during this period. The warehouse was built to protect hospitals and municipalities during the crisis.
Steinar Lie, director of the Norwegian Health Directorate, had previously told VG that this plan should cover “the basic Norwegian need” and that the plan “should ensure that the municipality has sufficient equipment.”
As VG wrote on Sunday, this scheme will be phased out as of January 1, 2021. Municipalities will no longer receive equipment from the national warehouse, unless there is a local outbreak. Instead, municipalities will build their own emergency reserves.
The opposition, led by the Labor Party, will present a proposal in the Storting next week calling on the government to maintain responsibility:
“The Storting calls on the government to continue to assume national responsibility for coordinating the purchase and control of infection control equipment during the covid-19 pandemic, to ensure that hospitals and municipalities have the appropriate equipment.” indicated in the proposal.
The proposal will be voted on Tuesday.
Vedum: – Fear
The leader of the SP, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, also believes that it is wrong for the government to abandon responsibility:
– The state has much higher preconditions to have a coordinating role, so that mentality seems very strange. In the long term, it will go beyond other services in the municipalities, such as nursing and care, says Vedum.
– I am very afraid that it will happen, and I receive messages from the municipalities that are concerned.
Vedum is shocked that only 15 municipalities received enough equipment from the national emergency arsenal during the first two months of the pandemic, as revealed by VG on Saturday:
– It’s frighteningly low. It shows how ill-prepared the Conservative government was. The VG figures show that the government had no choice but to shut down on March 12, because the preparation was so poor.
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Norwegian municipalities must build their own emergency reserves: – We don’t have that money
Ingvild Kjerkol believes that the Norwegian authorities should reconsider the entire distribution key, which states that municipalities will receive 20 percent of the national stock, while hospitals will receive 70 percent.
– The national authorities made a scheme that degraded the municipalities, says Kjerkol.
– The feedback we have received is that the municipalities have not received what they needed from the national warehouse. If municipalities now have to buy everything themselves, there will be a favorable market for infection control wholesalers and a flourishing of rogue players in the market.
SV: – Almost unreal
Karin Andersen at SV, who heads the Local Government and Administration Committee at the Storting, says there is no doubt that Norwegian municipalities have needed more help from the national emergency reserve than they have received.
Andersen is currently on a trip to Norway to speak with Norwegian municipalities about the challenges they face.
– It is almost unreal to hear that a minister with responsibility for health neither understands nor assumes responsibility for the safety of people now.
– The government and Høie are responsible for emergency preparedness, for example the infection control team was scandalously deficient, both in hospitals and in municipalities. It is the government that has hugely subsidized municipalities, which means that they have more regulatory tasks than they have money and must cut.
Høie: It is natural for municipalities and hospitals to take responsibility
According to Health Minister Bent Høie (H), the government is changing the scheme because the availability and prices of infection control equipment have become more stable.
– Then it is also natural that both hospitals and municipalities from the New Year resume their regulatory tasks when it comes to acquiring infection control equipment.
– The health authorities have built a national reserve stock that will be further developed and maintained to become a national emergency stock, in order to be able to deal with any problems with future deliveries.
It emphasizes that municipalities and hospitals that do not receive deliveries of infection control equipment on time should be able to get help from the national warehouse.
– It is an extra contingency that allows the health service to face situations with a large increase in infections, even in the case of a new failure in the international market or in the case of new shipping challenges.
