Many eyebrows were raised earlier this week when a letter - dated 10th March - leaked out. It is from the Ministry of the Public Service to Danini Marin - the Director of the Drug Inspectorate who also happens to be the wife of the Minister of Health, Pablo Marin and the daughter of his Cabinet Colleague Erwin Contreras.
It informed her that effective February, she was moved up from pay scale 18 to 23 and her salary upgraded commensurately.
Sounds politically fishy - with her connections - but the Director gf health Services told LOVE FM that it is not irregular:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, DHS
"The post under which she is hired was going to be placed on another pay scale. I don't know who her predecessor was because there was no previous director of head of drug inspector unit because that is a recent unit that was created to further scale up what the pharmacy department was doing. What previously had been happening is we had a pharmacy unit and a drug inspector only but this a drug inspector unit that now has 4 drug inspectors that do work across the country, so I don't know that there was a previous person in that position because the unit is relatively new and it has been expanding to be meet the demands in terms of where we are going. I was aware of that situation, it is being done in tandem with a restructuring of 3 particular units, the drug inspector unit being one, the pharmacy department being the other one, which I think is where you are alluding to was there before and that is also pending to be restructured where we have asked for my desk as least made the recommendation for that particular head of that department to go to a higher pay scale and drug inspector to also be scaled up and my desk had also submitted restructuring of central medical stores in Ladyville, so point of fact, it would have been 3 departments within the Ministry of Health that would have had to been scaled up to try to meet, one is the increasing demands that these departments are going through, the other thing that we are factoring in is because most of these persons are now having a Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy. Recall that in the past we only had an Associate's Degree programs, so we're trying to scale up and make sure that everybody is compensated to a certain extend to where they should be."
Reporter
"Considering this is the Minister of Health's daughter, you can basically confirm that it's not a matter of favouritism or any kind of biased?"
Dr. Marvin Manzanero
"It's not the Minister of Health's daughter. I can see where people try to establish that link, I don't know that when we make recommendations, we make it for a specific persons and that's why I'm saying it becomes applicable to pharmacy department and any other department, I don't think pay scales or terms of reference are being drafted for persons."
And while the Minister is now acknowledging that degree for pharmacists and adjusting salaries accordingly, medical technologists say that their bachelor's degree from UB is not being similarly recognised and they are getting no adjustment in salary - which makes them question if special consideration is being given for pharmacists.
