KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MPATT) plans to meet with pub­lic-sec­tor doc­tors this week, in­clud­ing the North­west Doc­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NW­DA).

It fol­lows an on­go­ing pe­ti­tion by the NW­DA high­light­ing “deep con­cerns” re­gard­ing salaries, work­ing con­di­tions and the pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al wel­fare of doc­tors.

On Sun­day, the NW­DA pres­i­dent Dr Kevin Har­ris, said 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 have 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 a safe en­vi­ron­ment.

“The pro­tec­tive ser­vices have been grant­ed a ‘haz­ard al­lowance’ and men­tal health as­sis­tance, yet no such ac­knowl­edge­ment or com­pen­sa­tion has been ex­tend­ed to us,” the NW­DA said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, a reg­is­tered non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion that seeks the in­ter­ests of doc­tors with­in the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, said oth­er pub­lic sec­tor doc­tors have reached out ex­press­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns.

The pe­ti­tion launched by the NW­DA ini­tial­ly asked for 1500 sig­na­tures. Yes­ter­day, it sur­passed that to­tal and set a new goal of 2,500. BY 5 pm yes­ter­day, the pe­ti­tion by the NW­DA had al­ready gar­nered 2,495 sig­na­tures. The pe­ti­tion, on change.org, stat­ed that 1,493 peo­ple signed in just one day.

The NW­DA had al­so com­plained that MPATT had no con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly elect­ed lead­er­ship since 2015.

Har­ris said doc­tors feared they have been with­out a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body ca­pa­ble of ef­fec­tive­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for their rights and in­ter­ests.

The last act­ing pres­i­dent of MPATT was list­ed as Dr Kurt Fur­longe.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an MPATT of­fi­cial said the as­so­ci­a­tion will be hold­ing talks with the NW­DA and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor doc­tors this week.

While a date is yet to be set for the meet­ing, Har­ris said he looks for­ward to hav­ing di­a­logue with MPATT.