Private mental health provider Richmond Fellowship today appealed for a truce in the escalating Canterbury health dispute.
The fellowship called on the Canterbury District Health Board and unions in the long-running pay dispute to accept greater responsibility in seeking a resolution.
The board said it will close Christchurch's Hillmorton Hospital (formerly Sunnyside)
for the mentally ill because of union staff plans to strike over a failure to break a six-month deadlock in contract negotiations.
Canterbury health staff have been offered an average 4 per cent pay rise, which has been declined.
Combined unions meet tonight to confirm strike action. Details will be released tomorrow.
Health Minister Annette King plans to attend a meeting tomorrow of all the parties, organised by Christchurch mayor Garry Moore in an effort to resolve the crisis.
Richmond Fellowship, which provides health care in Christchurch, today pleaded for an end to the impasse.
Fellowship chief executive Gerry Walmisley said Hillmorton, which cares for more than 200 seriously ill people, could not afford to close.
"It can't close and people have got to make compromises or we'll have a tragedy in the making," he told NZPA.
"But I can't see a break in the impasse. Money is a symptom but it's more now to do with mental health being treated as a second class service.
"We care for 250 people in Christchurch and we'll help but we can't absorb the entire psychiatric population overnight. It's an appalling situation."
Prime Minister Helen Clark said the Government would not interfere with negotiations.
"They have got to get together and sort it out," she said on Newstalk ZB today.
The board and unions will resume talks with the Nurses Organisation on Wednesday.
Canterbury hospitals will be forced to shut all but acute services next month if health workers go ahead with planned industrial action.
Board chairman Syd Bradley said it could not offer any more money, and its offer was already double what Otago workers settled on.
- NZPA
