In March Te Whatu Ora said it was about to start determining how many comms staff it needed. Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
Te Whatu Ora has yet to decide how many of its scores of communications staff it will keep, having said three months ago it would be working on it.
Its large number of comms staff became a target of National Party criticism in March.
The agency has since updated the numbers, saying in a new OIA response it had 161 comms employees - some part-time, so 150 full-time equivalents. Back in March it had another 26 contractors on top of that.
In March, Te Whatu Ora said it was about to start determining how many it actually needed.
"Future communications staffing levels are yet to be determined," it told RNZ on Wednesday.
Among its comms, 24 were in the national team and 137 in the districts and 'shared service' agencies doing the likes of information material for patients. About 20 of those 137 are currently working on national projects, Te Whatu Ora said.
Answering RNZ's questions about the wage costs of employees and contractors would take a lot of collation and detract from core functions, so it refused that info, it said.
Answers to parliamentary written questions show the agency had 947 contracting and consulting arrangements across all types of work in its first six months as a new agency, to December 2022.
The Māori Health Authority Te Aka Whai Ora had 83 of these.
