Final Friday, nearly 1,000 Indian Well being Service (IHS) staff have been laid off as a part of President Trump’s govt order, “Implementing the President’s ‘Division of Authorities Effectivity’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” Levi Rickert reported for Native Information On-line over the weekend.
Nevertheless, shortly after, the layoffs affecting IHS employees have been rescinded, Levi Rickert wrote. Hours after staff had been knowledgeable of the layoffs, supervisors started notifying the focused employees that they’d been given a reprieve, ICT’s Jourdan Bennett-Begaye knowledgeable.
“The Indian Well being Service has at all times been handled because the redheaded stepchild at HHS,” mentioned the just lately elected Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in an announcement emailed to Native Information On-line. “My father typically complained that IHS was chronically understaffed and underfunded. President Trump desires me to rectify this unhappy historical past. Indians undergo the best degree of continual illness of any demographic. IHS will probably be a precedence over the following 4 years. President Trump desires me to finish the continual illness epidemic starting in Indian nation.”
“[T]he Nationwide Indian Well being Board, the Nationwide Council of City Indian Well being, and the Nationwide Indian Youngster Welfare Affiliation despatched a letter to the administration urging them to exempt staff important to fulfilling america’ belief and treaty obligations to tribal nations,” Rickert reported.
“We are able to affirm the layoffs have been rescinded thanks a minimum of partially to advocacy by the various Tribal organizations.” a spokesperson for the Nationwide Indian Well being Board mentioned in an electronic mail to Native Information On-line.
The mass layoffs affected the CDC, FDA, and NIH, as our editor-in-chief reported on February 18.
