Gold Coast nurses are stressed and some forced to seek counselling as debt collectors hound them for wages they say they do not owe five years on from a payroll debacle. A 60-year-old Tugun nurse, who left Queensland Health in 2011, has written to Health Minister Cameron Dick urging him to stop the harassment. The Government, under questioning in Estimates hearings, revealed a $900,000 contract had been given to a debt collector to chase the staffers who had left the public sector. The veteran Coast nurse, who cannot give her name because she has since joined a private hospital, said she did not owe any money to Queensland Health. “They started at about $8000 but they couldn’t find the overpayments,” she said. “Three years passed and in June this year they sent me a bill for $5000,” the nurse said. “Last Thursday I got a message that it was $1700. Then I rang them and they said it was a typographical error. Now it’s $5142. “It’s just been an absolute joke all the way along. I’m trying to get someone to listen to me.” The nurse sought help from the electorate office of Currumbin MP Jann Stuckey and received advice that Queensland Health maintains the overpayments were from night shifts and overtime. “You need to ask the case manager to explain why it has taken five years for this overpayment to be picked up in the system and why they weren’t corrected at the time of overpayment by the payroll,” the staffer told her. The nurse wrote to Health Minister Cameron Dick and sent paper work but said she was yet to get a reply.
