Simple motion against the Health Minister
The Social Democrats tabled a simple motion against the health minister.
Corina Cristea, 16.02.2021, 02:00
Romania’s Parliament on Monday was the site of a dispute between the political power and the opposition, who blamed each other for the sorry state of the country’s healthcare system. At the initiative of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the main party in the opposition, Health Minister Vad Voiculescu was summoned in Parliament to answer some questions regarding the recent tragedy at the Matei Bals Hospital, in Bucharest, where a fire killed several intubated patients. Accused of not having taken any measures for the patients’ safety, Minister Voiculescu is now faced with the first simple motion tabled by the Social Democrats against a member of the current cabinet. PSD says the minister was not active enough as regards the testing and immunization of the population and that his messages to the coordinators of the vaccination campaign were contradictory and even discouraging for the physicians involved in this process. He did not come up with concrete solutions, says the Social Democrat MP, Alexandru Rafila: ˝He should not tell us thinks like: the ministry assesses, monitors and such, which have no impact without concrete safety measures in hospitals, measures to improve testing and epidemiological monitoring, in the context of this public health emergency. The lack of responsibility is fatal.”
In his turn, Minister Vlad Voiculescu said that in the two months since he took office, around 10 million euros have been allocated to investment in Covid hospitals. Schools have been reopened, the access to testing has increased and physicians have been paid to schedule patients for the vaccine, Voiculescu has explained. He also said that the Social Democratic Party is guilty for the current state of the Romanian healthcare system.
Track: ”The ones who speak about responsibility are precisely those who had 12 health ministers since the 1989 Revolution. The ones who speak about responsibility are the party colleagues of the last three health ministers before me, all three of them investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate. The ones who speak about responsibility headed the Health Ministry for 18 of the last 30 years, during which time they created strong organized crime networks, with their party branches, with their county councils, networks that go as far as Parliament.”
Minister Voiculescu was supported by the MPs with the USR-PLUS Alliance and by its partners in the ruling coalition, the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), who said they would not vote the motion. In their turn, the representatives of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), said they plan to support the Social Democrats’ initiative. The vote will be held on Wednesday in the Chamber of Deputies’ plenary session. (EE)
