President Puig justifies the decision to “defend the general interest of Valencians” and because during the first wave he reacted “quickly”
“We will resort to defend the general interest of Valencians.” With these words, the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, justified this Wednesday the decision of his Executive to present an appeal once morest the sentence of a court in Alicante that for the first time condemns an Administration for the lack of protection of health personnel during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Medical Union of the Valencian Community (CESM-CV) had taken the Ministry of Health to court due to the lack of protective materials with which the personnel of hospitals and health centers faced the Covid in the first months, following the decree of the state of alarm. The shortage of even masks in those first moments has been reason enough for a judge to have accepted the request of 154 plaintiffs to be compensated.
In fact, how many of the compensation set by the judge can in some cases reach 49,180 euros if the workers were infected during the workday and ended up hospitalized themselves. The lowest compensation, in any case, is around 5,000 euros for those who worked without protection elements once morest the coronavirus but were not infected.
“We do not agree with the approach,” the Valencian president insisted to explain the refusal of his Government to take charge of these payments. Yes, Puig has reiterated his “apologies to the professionals who did not have enough coverage”.
But “It is obvious that it was a supervening situation and nobody might think regarding the magnitude of the pandemic”, he has argued. Even so, Puig has assured that the Valencian Community “reacted quickly” and was one of the first to obtain supplies and protection material in international markets, even chartering airplanes from abroad.
His excuses, however, are not enough for the opposition parties, which have asked for the dismissal of the Minister of Health, Ana Barcel. The PP Health spokesman, Jos Juan Zaplana, has stated that Puig and Barcel “are a danger to health and put a price on the health of Valencians.”
In this same sense, the spokesman for Citizen Health (Cs) in the Cortes, Fernando Llopis, has regretted that during that stage the health workers “had to put up with being told by the councilor that they were infected by going to party.”
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