It was only the death of 18 residents of a nursing home in Split that has brought to light the difficult working conditions of nursing home employees, half of whom are nurses, the Jutarnji List daily of Wednesday reports.

As many as 40 percent of all Covid-19 fatalities in Croatia, or 34 of 83, are residents of nursing homes whom the system failed to protect, the daily says.

Particularly conspicuous are attempts by Social Policy Minister Vesna Bedekovic, whose ministry is responsible for the functioning of nursing homes, to dodge responsibility for the tragedy in Split as is her insistence that there was no misconduct in that case, says the daily.

The scandal in Split has also brought to the fore the fact that posts of nursing home directors are given to people whose biographies have nothing to do with social or medical work.

The Split nursing home is headed by Ivan Skaricic, a former long-serving mayor of the coastal town of Omis who lost elections in 2013 and member of parliament from the Croatian Democratic Union, who is a history teacher and was appointed to head the nursing home with 350 residents without any previous experience in the field or a selection process, says the daily.