The Public Health Ministry plans to put over 16,000 temporarily employed health care workers into civil service positions in a bid to resolve the shortage of medical workers, Minister Wittaya Keawparadai said yesterday.

The move comes after Cabinet on Tuesday learned there are 25,000 vacancies available for the government official positions.

Under the plan, Wittaya said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had assigned him to work with the Office of the Civil Service Commission (OCSC) to resolve the medical worker shortage problem by pushing 16,000 temporarily employed health care workers - including doctors, nurses, dentists, medical technologists, public health officers and other health care professionals - to become government officers.

Wittaya said he has ordered the ministry's permanent secretary, Dr Prat Boonyawongevirot to consult with OCSC on putting, the largest group of temporary employers in the public health ministry- 7,000 temporarily employed nurses - into civil service positions.

Wittaya has also set up a special task force to find out how to increase fixed allowances of all health care workers with the ministry.

Previously the government approved the fixed allowance for only rural doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses - a decision that caused illfeeling among other health care workers who did not do as well as the four health care professionals.

To reduce tension, Public Health Ministry spokesperson, Dr Suphan Sridhamma said the ministry's committee, chaired by deputy permanent secretary Dr Siriporn Kanchana, today will discuss with 13 ministry health care professionals over increasing the fixed allowance for all health care professionals.

The committee will also evaluate the performance of rural doctors after the previous government approved an increase in fixed allowances for them. The evaluation will start by the end of this month and a second evaluation in six months.

" We want to know that they [rural doctors] are still working with the health ministry after we increased their fixed allowances, or do they want to resign from the ministry and work with private hospitals. Also we want to make sure they still provide good services for patients," he said.

Community nurses club chairperson, Janyawat Tabchan said the ministry should put over 7,000 temporary nurses into a government official position as a first priority, then increase the fixed allowances for community nurses at a reasonable rate to maintain community nurse work with the health ministry in the long term.

" The minister promised to work on these issues for a month but we think that the process was slow. We want to let him know we are watching what he has done to resolve this problem so far," she said.