The 9th session of the County Council was held on June 28. The conference room at the County Office was packed. This was due to the exceptionally large group of employees of the Regional Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill, who decided to demonstrate their opposition to the idea of merging the two Bolesławiec hospitals. Mirosław Kochanowski, chairman of the "Solidarity" Workplace Commission, distributed an open letter to the councillors. The letter stated, among other things: "Our opposition stems from the fact that all the actions undertaken so far by the initiators do not result from anticipated mutual benefits, but are a last resort and the easiest way to remedy the mounting problems of the County Hospital. We see no chance of improving the situation of our Hospital through the merger of the two institutions."
Jan Leon Stasiak, a Law and Justice councillor, proposed including a discussion on the merger of the two institutions in the agenda. The county councillors rejected the proposal by a majority vote. This was justified by the need to convene an extraordinary session. Nevertheless, the issue was already raised at Thursday's session. County Governor Cezary Przybylski said that no decisions had been made regarding the merger of the two hospitals and that the merger was merely one of four options under consideration. Chairman Mirosław Kochanowski announced at the meeting that the employees of the regional hospital would not allow their patients to be harmed.
Józef Król, a Bolesławiec Land councillor, then took the floor. Król said that the matter appeared to have more of a media dimension than a factual one, and that employees of the Regional Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill had attended the County Council session in such large numbers in order to hear the County Governor assure them that their jobs were not at risk. The councillor recalled that the idea of a merger had already emerged in 1999. At that time, however, it was precisely the regional hospital that was in a considerably worse situation. Over eight years, the fortunes of the two Bolesławiec hospitals had completely changed. Józef Król added that a similar merger had ended badly for the hospital in Branice. "Let us not make the mistakes others have made," warned the former mayor of Bolesławiec. A councillor from the same group, Krzysztof Konopka, asked what Cezary Przybylski and Karol Stasik personally thought about the plans to merge the institutions.
"I have never worked toward merging the hospitals, and I do not intend to," said County Council Chairman Karol Stasik. The chairman stressed that a hospital merger would be disadvantageous under the Polish legal system. Cezary Przybylski admitted that the concept of merging the hospitals had been included in his election program. Nevertheless, he promised that nothing would happen without the hospital employees' knowledge and consent, and that he was fully aware that a slave cannot be an employee. "There must be consensus; there must be agreement," the County Governor added.
(GA report / KG video)