OpinionStéphanie Arboit
Updated 6 minutes ago—
“My wife has been a nurse in a really difficult ward for a long time, but I have always seen her happy. In recent years, I’m worried about her health, she’s wasting away. ” Confidence of a reader in the publication of various “24 hours” surveys on the Riviera-Chablais Hospital (HRC). Last summer, we revealed the downturn in activities, the departure of executives and burn-outs and, more recently, the chaotic beginnings of the brand new hospital in Rennaz.
As we wrote, employees fear to speak up, claiming to be threatened or under strict directives to silence them. Despite this, red flags have been sent to the political world in recent years. It is clear today that they have been downplayed by the Interparliamentary Control Commission of the HRC of the Grand Council (CIC-VD). MEPs were satisfied with the repeated arguments that the staff’s complaints were motivated by the wallet. If people were complaining, it was because of the CTC, if they were leaving, it was to win better in the private sector.
“HRC staff grievances were downplayed by MPs”
Elected officials should have wondered more about the relevance of such arguments, as a new hospital was about to emerge from the ground. Indeed, wouldn’t any normally constituted doctor or caregiver dream of starting a new adventure in the magnificent setting of a tool at the cutting edge of modernity? Would doctors have given up on such a dream, the “plan of a lifetime” by mere greed? Those who expressed doubts were asked not to co-manage. However, the convention that gave birth to the HRC states that oversight of the interparliamentary commission “relates to the strategic objectives of the institution and the fulfillment of its mandate.”
The CIC-VD has not fully played its supervisory role. Some wanted to dissolve it now that the hospital is built. Whether it survives or is replaced by another commission, MEPs will have to question and possibly redefine its function and scope (in agreement with elected Valaisans). This debate is more urgent than that on a possible parliamentary committee of inquiry.