Sascha Wil­son

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh will be meet­ing with the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) on Mon­day for dis­cus­sions on out­stand­ing in­cre­ments and oth­er is­sues.

This fol­lows sev­er­al protests by nurs­es and mid­wives over the past few weeks.

TTR­NA pres­i­dent Idi Stew­art had warned that the protests will cul­mi­nate with a mass demon­stra­tion from the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain to the min­istry’s head of­fice on Ju­ly 1, fol­lowed by work­ers em­bark­ing on va­ca­tion leave if the min­is­ter did not meet with them.

But speak­ing at the min­istry’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­enceon Sat­ur­day, Deyals­ingh as­sured that the health care sys­tem was sta­ble. He said he had re­ceived a for­mal re­quest from the union last week Wednes­day for a meet­ing.

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) an­nounced re­cent­ly that the health work­ers would be paid their out­stand­ing in­cre­ments in full. How­ev­er, the union called for a meet­ing to ad­dress oth­er out­stand­ing mon­ey, per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment, stu­dent nurs­es’ stipends, ve­hi­cles be­ing used to trans­port pa­tients with­out the re­quired am­bu­lance li­cense and the non-in­volve­ment of nurs­es and mid­wives at the de­ci­sion ta­ble.

At yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­plained that when the Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice it dis­cov­ered that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had promised in­cre­ments to health work­ers. How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment did not have the mon­ey to pay the health work­ers’ back­pay, which was $40 mil­lion. With the rental of its fa­cil­i­ties and fundrais­ing ven­tures, how­ev­er, he said the NCRHA was able to ac­cu­mu­late $20 mil­lion that was put in a fund for the back­pay. When the is­sue arose, he said NCRHA con­tact­ed him and he per­mit­ted them to use their fund­ing for COVID-19 ex­pens­es to pay off the back­pay. Im­bert said he then re­plen­ished the COVID-19 fund­ing from the sup­ple­men­tary ap­pro­pri­a­tion in the mid-year re­view.

Im­bert made the point that the mon­ey did not fall from the sky nor was it plucked from a mon­ey tree.

“It was just a very in­no­v­a­tive use of funds they al­ready had,” Im­bert said.