Healthcare workers to receive cash bonus; 'Applause not enough' says Finance Minister

Healthcare personnel who are involved with fighting the coronavirus pandemic in the Netherlands are set to receive a bonus to their pay, Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra told RTL Nieuws on Tuesday. He said that while it is great to see so many people in the Netherlands show their appreciation for those in healthcare, that appreciation needs to be backed up in a more tangible way.

"As a cabinet we have always said that it is great what is done by all those professionals and that it deserves a reward," he said, adding that such a reward should "not just in the form of applause."

This follows after the House of Representatives put forward a proposal last month for healthcare workers to receive additional pay, which prompted the cabinet to begin exploring how this might be arranged.

Hoekstra says he does not yet know how much healthcare workers can expect to receive in bonus, nor whether it will be included in the Spring Memorandum, a mid-year budgetary report published by the government.

The minister's comments come as healthcare workers in the Netherlands continue to battle Covid-19 after weeks of increased strain on hospital capacity, despite a general decline in new deaths and hospitalizations being reported over the past month.