Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Ques­tions have sur­faced sur­round­ing the re­fusal by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) to re­new the con­tracts of wards maids at­tached to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty. This fol­lows a de­ci­sion by the Au­thor­i­ty to cease the hir­ing of wards maids at the fa­cil­i­ty and re­place them with clean­ers. How­ev­er, in­for­ma­tion reach­ing Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the move has seen the work­ers re­ceiv­ing about $800 less a month along with los­ing sev­er­al oth­er ben­e­fits. The month­ly salary of a wards maid ranges from $4,100 to $6,000. Apart from a pend­ing salary in­crease based on ap­praisals con­duct­ed every three-months, a wards maid is al­so en­ti­tled to cost of liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA) of $130, a meal al­lowance of $625, laun­dry al­lowance of $220, an an­nu­al $1,200 shoe al­lowance and uni­form ma­te­r­i­al that is sup­plied by the au­thor­i­ty.

Mean­while, the ba­sic month­ly re­mu­ner­a­tion of a clean­er is $3,362 and CO­LA of $125. The fa­cil­i­ty falls un­der the purview of the NCRHA which is al­so re­spon­si­ble for 16 oth­er health fa­cil­i­ties to­geth­er with the Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions for­ward­ed by the Sun­day Guardian, the au­thor­i­ty's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Suszan­na Clarke, con­firmed the re­cruit­ment change stat­ing that va­can­cies are now be­ing filled in the job clas­si­fi­ca­tion of a clean­er I. Clarke stat­ed: "There is a job de­scrip­tion for wards maid and for a clean­er on the ap­proved NCRHA es­tab­lish­ment. Nei­ther of these was changed for work­ers at the Ari­ma Dis­trict Heath Fa­cil­i­ty. Un­der the Min­istry of Health (MOH) peo­ple hired to clean the wards were called wards maids.

"With the ad­vent of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) some of the MOH work­ers were trans­ferred to work in oth­er health fa­cil­i­ties and car­ried over their nomen­cla­ture from their pre­vi­ous jobs. These peo­ple were al­lowed to do so un­til their re­tire­ment/res­ig­na­tion from the in­sti­tu­tion. "Sub­se­quent­ly, peo­ple were re­cruit­ed on a short term ba­sis to fill va­can­cies cre­at­ed by those peo­ple va­cat­ing of­fice and for some time the nomen­cla­ture re­mained. It must be point­ed out that the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty is not in fact a hos­pi­tal and has no bed­ded wards. There­fore, the term wards maid does not ap­ply." The clean­ers, who have all been of­fered con­tract em­ploy­ment, have filled sev­en of the 11 va­can­cies at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Work­ers ag­griev­ed

Whether the move would al­so be im­ple­ment­ed at oth­er heath fa­cil­i­ties is un­cer­tain, but ag­griev­ed work­ers are call­ing for the in­volve­ment of Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis in the mat­ter. The work­ers, who spoke un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of be­ing vic­timised, are ac­cus­ing the NCRHA of op­er­at­ing in a high-hand­ed man­ner stat­ing that they were nev­er in­formed that their job de­scrip­tions were go­ing to change when their con­tracts came to an end. "Many of us have been work­ing for al­most two years as a wards maid. When we were hired our con­tracts of­fered us em­ploy­ment as wards maids. We were nev­er in­formed that we were go­ing to be of­fered jobs as clean­ers. "We were nev­er even sent home to say our ser­vice was bro­ken; all we know is that we came to work one morn­ing and one by one we were hand­ed let­ters in­form­ing us that we were now be­ing paid as clean­ers.

"Many of us made arrange­ments with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions based on our salaries and now we are in ar­rears. We were told to ei­ther ac­cept the of­fer or go home," the work­ers claimed pro­duc­ing a copy of their con­tract. The let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 18 of this year and signed by the for­mer hu­man re­source gen­er­al man­ag­er Patrick Rousseau stat­ed: "I am to ad­vise that ap­proval has been grant­ed for your em­ploy­ment as a Clean­er I as­signed with the NCRHA. This tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment gives you no spe­cial claim to fur­ther tem­po­rary ap­point­ments or per­ma­nent ap­point­ment and may be ter­mi­nat­ed by ei­ther par­ty giv­ing one week's no­tice in writ­ing. How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that the au­thor­i­ty re­serves the right to ter­mi­nate your ser­vice at short no­tice." The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed: "You agree to hold all in­for­ma­tion in con­fi­dence and un­der­stand that the au­thor­i­ty pol­i­cy re­quires, as a con­di­tion of em­ploy­ment, that all con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion ac­quired in the per­for­mance of your du­ties must be safe­guard­ed."

In ad­di­tion, the work­ers are al­so con­tend­ing that the NCRHA is al­so in breach of the terms and con­di­tions set out by the per­son­nel de­part­ment which states that clean­ers are re­quired to work a 40-hour work week. "We can­not ac­cept this type of treat­ment any longer. Our jobs have been changed with­out in­form­ing us and now we are be­ing forced to work longer hours. "If we are be­ing hired and paid as clean­ers, then we have no right work­ing every oth­er week­end and on pub­lic hol­i­days. If we are be­ing paid as a clean­er then we have to work the hours of a clean­er. The rules and reg­u­la­tions state clear­ly that clean­ers are re­quired to work a 40-hour work week. We are plead­ing for the min­is­ter to vis­it the fa­cil­i­ty to see how things are be­ing run... she will be sur­prised."

Chron­ic staff short­age

Mean­while, the re­cruit­ment change is not the on­ly is­sue at the fa­cil­i­ty as phar­ma­cists and ra­di­og­ra­phers are al­so call­ing for the staff short­age to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed. Sun­day Guardian has been in­formed that one of the two dis­pen­sary ar­eas has been tem­porar­i­ly closed caus­ing a back­log in the de­liv­ery of ser­vice. The phar­ma­cy that pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed un­til 10 pm is now be­ing run be­tween the hours of 8 am to 4 pm. "This phar­ma­cy is sup­posed to be staffed with ten peo­ple. We are op­er­at­ing with a team of half that size. We can­not con­tin­ue like this any­more. Imag­ine, peo­ple re­ceiv­ing pre­scrip­tions have to wait un­til the next morn­ing to come back for med­ica­tion; those that have mon­ey can go to oth­er phar­ma­cies but the poor peo­ple have to wait."

A sim­i­lar prob­lem, Sun­day Guardian fur­ther learnt, is al­so oc­cur­ring in the X-ray de­part­ment with staff work­ing as much as 20 days with­out any leave. Cur­rent­ly on­ly two ra­di­og­ra­phers and dark room tech­ni­cians are op­er­at­ing in the de­part­ment. Un­der the reg­u­la­tion ra­di­og­ra­phers are en­ti­tled to a rest day and two days off at the end of their du­ty.

NCRHA de­nies breach

The au­thor­i­ty has de­nied any breach stat­ing that em­ploy­ees were in­formed be­fore­hand that when their cur­rent short-term em­ploy­ment pe­ri­od came to an end they would be of­fered re-em­ploy­ment in the ca­pac­i­ty of clean­ers. Clarke stat­ed: "When the con­tracts of these em­ploy­ees came to an end an of­fer was made that was in sync with the ap­proved em­ploy­ment struc­ture. "These em­ploy­ees ac­cept­ed the con­tracts for the cor­rect­ed po­si­tion of clean­er. Of­fers of em­ploy­ment made to em­ploy­ees re­flect­ed the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for that of a clean­er. They were aware of this be­fore ac­cep­tance of the new con­tracts." Ex­plain­ing that the change in the po­si­tion ti­tle was aimed at reg­u­lar­is­ing and rec­on­cil­ing the job with the du­ties and de­mands NCRHA cur­rent­ly faces, Clarke stat­ed that at the end of a con­tract it is at the dis­cre­tion of the au­thor­i­ty to of­fer sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent jobs of em­ploy­ment to the re­spec­tive in­di­vid­u­als.

"At the NCRHA, for peo­ple who are giv­en short term em­ploy­ment, when their em­ploy­ment comes to an end they can be of­fered the same or al­ter­na­tive jobs based on their qual­i­fi­ca­tions. These em­ploy­ees were of­fered dif­fer­ent jobs en­tire­ly–this was not a case of changed job de­scrip­tions. The com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages for the two cat­e­gories are dif­fer­ent as they are dif­fer­ent jobs with dif­fer­ent du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Em­ploy­ees en­joy all the ben­e­fits and en­ti­tle­ments of the po­si­tion," Clarke stat­ed. Ad­mit­ting that clean­ers are re­quired to work a 40-hour work week, Clarke said the fa­cil­i­ty op­er­ates on a 24-hour ba­sis and has to meet the needs of the pop­u­la­tion. "Whilst all em­ploy­ees are re­quired to work a 40-hour work week, the NCRHA as a health­care in­sti­tu­tion pro­vides a 24-hour ser­vice to the pop­u­la­tion of T&T. Many cat­e­gories of staff in­clud­ing clean­ers are there­fore re­quired to do shift du­ty.

With re­gard to the staff short­age at the dis­pen­sary, Clarke said the NCRHA con­tin­ues to source suit­ably qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants for re­cruit­ment to fill its short­falls to en­able us to con­tin­ue to pro­vide full de­liv­ery of ser­vices to our pa­tients. Clarke added: "As is the case of phar­ma­cists and oth­er al­lied health pro­fes­sion­als, there are short­ages na­tion­wide. While we may have some short­ages at Ari­ma we op­er­ate an on-call sys­tem to en­sure avail­abil­i­ty of ser­vice on week­ends. Ser­vice is al­so avail­able on a 24-hour ba­sis at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex."