Farcical Response to Fair Travel Costs Report

8 January 2006

Farcical response from Government to Fair Travel Costs report

Rural Women New Zealand is incensed at the Government’s whitewash response to the recently released Health Select Committee report on RWNZ’s petition calling for the reimbursement of travel costs for home support workers.

The Government has rejected two of the Committee’s three recommendations, agreeing only that DHBs and providers must reimburse home support workers for their travel-related costs “in accordance with the principles set out in the Ministry of Health’s fair travel costs policy.”

Extra funding for home based support services was provided in the last two Budgets - $15.5 million in 2005 and $22 million in 2006 – but these sums have been largely absorbed by increases in client numbers, statutory increases in holiday pay and minimum wages, leaving little for travel costs.

RWNZ’s national president, Sherrill Dackers says “Government funding is woefully inadequate to meet travel time or expenses. The reimbursement of workers at an average of $1.50 an hour cannot possibly be labelled ‘fair’. We are deeply disappointed. 18,000 people signed the petition and it was a total waste of time.”

If it wasn’t for Rural Women New Zealand providing services in rural communities through its non-profit company, Access Homehealth, the provision of care to the elderly and infirm in remoter parts of the country would collapse, according to Graeme Titcombe, CEO of Access Homehealth. Yet only one DHB has agreed on a travel policy that differentiates between rural and urban care workers.

An independent study of the Nelson Marlborough DHB has shown that if homecare workers were paid for their travelling time and 50 cents a kilometre, the providers would be losing 0.93 cents an hour in urban areas, but a whopping $13.34 an hour in rural areas.

“No other providers would pick up the rural clients if we pulled out, the costs are not sustainable,” says Mr Titcombe. “There are large areas of the country that nobody will go near apart from us, including Canterbury and half the West Coast. The Government’s response is a disappointing joke.”

ENDS

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