Trust runs up £14,000 taxi bill

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The Western Health Trust has run up a taxi bill of nearly £14,000 in three months.

The cost is for transporting nurses from the Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh to Erne and Altnagelvin hospitals.

Their jobs in Omagh ended after acute services were cut and they were then redeployed.

Patricia McKeown of Unison said that the trust had an obligation to the Omagh staff.

The trust said costs stood at £13,835 to provide taxi and people carrier hire for those affected.

Ms McKeown said a redundancy bill "would be much bigger than £14,000."

She said the trust had an obligation to make sure that staff from the Omagh hospital were redeployed.

"It is not the staff's fault that services are being cut. At the end of the day, those who don't have transport or those who have to travel across the Western trust need that provision made," Ms McKeown said.

"That's the smaller issue. The much bigger issue is why we're having to decant our nurses and other staff across the western board when there were promises made about the Omagh hospital.

"We are supposed to have a new hospital in Omagh. That has to happen. The issue is where the money is going to come from. It is a big question for the executive and a big question for Omagh."

In a statement, the trust said it worked extremely hard to redeploy staff within a certain timeframe.

"The Western Trust has established close communications with staff and their union representatives throughout the redeployment process and will continue these arrangements in place until all staff have been redeployed," the statement said.