At the beginning of September, a large landslide occurred in the Saas valley. Some 2,200 people found themselves isolated from the world. The access road remained impassable for a week and the only solution to get to the plain was to take a seat in one of the helicopters chartered for the occasion. Some 900 people have benefited from this service, billed at 140 francs per person per flight. Among them were two caregivers from the Haut-Valais Hospital Center.
The “Walliser Bote” now tells us that these nurses will have to pay for the flights out of their own pockets. Their employer, the Canton, refuses to support them. A decision that is not to the taste of the ASI. “For us, it is less a legal question than a question of behavior and esteem towards its staff,” Christina Schuhmacherin, deputy director of the ASI, explains to “20 minutesn”. And Pierre-André Wagner, head of the ASI legal service, added: “How can we explain, let alone justify – at a time when the shortage of qualified personnel is enormous and only getting worse – such treatment disdainful?”
Contacted by “20 minutesn”, the hospital director reminds that: “In the event of local road closures (avalanches, mudslides, etc.), no solution subsidized by the employer can be offered”. Furthermore, the decision to take the helicopter taxi was made independently by the staff. “If the employees had decided to stay at home, the work not performed would have been deducted from overtime or compensated by a day of vacation,” explains Hugo Burgener.
Thus, officially, the situation is identical to that of the inhabitants of the side valleys, regularly stranded by snow in winter. “The assessment would have been different in the event of a major event, such as an earthquake or a catastrophic flood like that of Brig in 1993, where the crisis situation had been declared,” comments the director.
