Union airs paramedic recruitment worries
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Monday, 18 August, 2008
ABC Online
The ambulance union is worried Ambulance Victoria has been unable to recruit new paramedics for the state's south-west.
After months of advertising and interviews, Ambulance Victoria has filled one of 11 vacancies in the region.
Ambulance Employees Australia and the State Government are in pay negotiations, with the union pushing for a 24 per cent increase over four years.
The union's Victorian secretary, Steve McGhie, believes the pay talks have discouraged applicants.
"The Government and Ambulance Victoria management need to resolve the current negotiations with ourselves to try and improve wages and conditions for paramedics to attract people to ambulance work in rural Victoria and that needs to be done as quickly as possible," he said.
Ambulance Victoria says it is confident it will be able to fill the vacancies in the south-west.
The Grampians region general manager, Greg Leach, says sourcing applicants has been hard.
"We hadn't put any time lines on other than we hoped to recruit them during the 2008/2009 financial year, so look we're off to a pretty good start with our first person coming online in the next few weeks but we'd obviously like to have the other positions filled as soon as we can," he said.
Metro
