Pub­lic sec­tor doc­tors are now look­ing for­ward to wage ne­go­ti­a­tions af­ter meet­ing with the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MPATT).

This fol­lows a meet­ing be­tween MPATT and sev­er­al doc­tors, in­clud­ing the North­west Doc­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NW­DA), to dis­cuss wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and oth­er is­sues on Tues­day.

Doc­tors have been lob­by­ing for high­er wages, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions and rais­ing con­cerns about their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al wel­fare, and hun­dreds of them have signed a pe­ti­tion call­ing for these is­sues to be ad­dressed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, NW­DA pres­i­dent Dr Kevin Har­ris said it was an ini­tial meet­ing for ques­tions to be asked and he’s look­ing for­ward to fu­ture meet­ings with the as­so­ci­a­tion lead­ing up to ne­go­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, he did not want to di­vulge fur­ther de­tails on what was dis­cussed at the meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the NW­DA, doc­tors con­tin­ue to op­er­ate on 2015 salaries but that has be­come in­ad­e­quate. The doc­tors al­so com­plained that the “one-off pay­ment” re­ceived dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic did not even be­gin to cov­er the men­tal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal stress they have en­dured.

The NW­DA al­so said doc­tors have faced es­ca­lat­ing lev­els of vi­o­lence and threats while per­form­ing their du­ties. They point­ed to two ex­e­cu­tions which oc­curred on hos­pi­tal premis­es this year, while the as­so­ci­a­tion added that con­tin­ued dai­ly phys­i­cal threats from pa­tients and their fam­i­lies make it dif­fi­cult to pro­vide care in safe en­vi­ron­ments.

Ef­forts to con­tact MPATT head Dr Kurt Fur­longe were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.