Health vacancy controls would be 'inherently dangerous' for patients: Labor

Cytotoxic and clinical waste technician at the Royal Hobart Hospital Patrick Bradley said work on the hospital's infection control unit - deep cleaning wards hosting highly-infectious patients - was difficult at the best of times.

He said the cleaners wore heavy personal protective equipment to prevent exposure to pathogens and cleaning chemicals, and the loss of two out of five infection control jobs would have dire consequences.

"It is a specialized field that has to be done precisely," Mr Bradley said.

"[The infection control unit] has basically been told they don't matter.

"If they don't do their job properly, you can have a ward that goes into total lockdown, with no visitors, no coming and going, nursing staff locked into the shift because that disease can go right through the ward.

"The government just goes 'ah well, a football ground's more important than the health department'."

Mr Bradley said the job losses were the decision of a Department of Health vacancy control committee, as the roles had been advertised for "too long" and then deemed unnecessary.

The committee is tasked with reviewing vacant roles within the health department and determine which ones can be cut, in an attempt to find cost savings.

Labor's health spokeswoman Ella Haddad said the situation raised questions about the government's priorities as it amounted to cutting jobs during a "health crisis".

"Cutting this workforce in half is going to be inherently dangerous to patient access and flow, and to those workers," she said.

"If the government doesn't think that cleaning staff are frontline workers, who do they think are frontline workers?

"This is going to have enormous flow on effects for the rest of the hospital system."

Liberal Windermere MLC Nick Duigan said the claims were "more Labor lies" and the government was recruiting more "doctors, more nurses, more paramedics".

"This is frankly, more Labor lies," Mr Duigan said.

"There will be no cuts, as I'm advised, to those services. What we're doing is recruiting.

"Recruiting more doctors, more nurses, more paramedics, more police officers.

"There will be more frontline services being offered by this government in the coming weeks, months and years ahead."