Home and community support workers will receive a temporary 30% increase to their mileage rates for private car use to help offset rising fuel costs, Health Minister Simeon Brown announced on Thursday.
Mr Brown said the support workers’ role required frequent daily travel to provide care in people’s homes and the government was acting quickly to ease the pressure of rising fuel costs.
It was rising from 63.5 cents per km to 82.5c/km.
But a Dunedin support worker, who declined to give their name, said though any increase was appreciated it did not cover rising costs and was the first increase for four years.
‘‘It is not just the petrol, but it is your car you are using all the time,’’ the worker said.
‘‘At a minimum I’m doing 30,000km-40,000km a year. It could be double that some years, so that is a lot of wear and tear on my vehicle.
‘‘We pay all our own expenses; we pay our insurance — obviously every car has to be registered and warranted.
‘‘So if I just put a set of tyres on, which cost me $800 on Tuesday, which my partner paid for, but you’re clocking up the kilometres, you’re having to get serviced a lot more frequently than the average person does.’’
The worker said the system was set up so that mileage payments only kicked in when the trip was more than 15km one way.
‘‘I’ve just dropped a client, which I absolutely hate doing, because he’s 13km away, so it’s a 26km return trip, and it’s a 15-minute visit, so it’s actually costing me to go there. So I’ve had to let that client go, and I’ve been going there for over five years, and it’s awful.’’
The worker gets paid $2.35 extra for every appointment under 15km away. All up, the increase would be be just under $20 per 100km.
The worker said it just added stress to what was already a stressful job.
‘‘I know that everybody’s going to whinge and say nothing’s ever enough. And I know that the government’s only got so much money. But, you know, this has been four years.
The fuel price hasn’t just gone up in the last month. It’s gone up over the last four years.’’
The worker said people may give up the job in a workforce which was already stretched.
‘‘There’s going to be people that are going to die in their home. They’re going to fall over and break bones. They’ll end up in rest-home-level care or hospital-level care, which is going to cost the government even more money.
‘‘Most people want to stay at home and most people appreciate us when we go into their homes. We help them, and keep them in their homes, in their familiar surroundings.’’
Mr Brown said the increase would remain in place for up to 12 months, or until the price of 91 octane petrol fell below $3 per litre for four consecutive weeks.
