‘Ministry needs more medical assessors’

Mr Baledrokadroka said the ministry relied on the doctors for medical assessment especially when dealing with compensation cases.

The Ministry of Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations said full time assessors were needed to clear the backlog of compensation cases handled by the ministry.

“This is one of the areas that we are really short of staff inside the ministry, in fact we already made submissions to have at least two medical assessors in the ministry,” said Permanent Secretary Viliame Baledrokadroka. Mr Baledrokadroka was being questioned by the Public Accounts Committee while making submissions for the ministry yesterday in Parliament on the 2015 Auditor-General Report. Committee chairperson Mohammed Dean said the responsibility on the medical assessor based at the ministry was huge.

He said the ministry should consider recruiting another doctor to be based at their office.

Mr Baledrokadroka said the ministry relied on the doctors for medical assessment especially when dealing with compensation cases.

He said a full-time medical assessor was currently based at the ministry headquarters in Suva who was responsible for carrying out final medical assessment for injured workers and medical opinion for death cases. However, Mr Baledrokadroka said the ministry had included in their budget submissions that they needed more assessors to be based with them.

He said the ministry had trained 218 medical assessors, including doctors from the Ministry for Health, on impairment assessment. Mr Baledrokadroka said they would request the Ministry of Health’s assistance if they needed a medical specialist. He said the medical assessor was required to visit all divisions around the country to carry out assessment on victims.