Sascha Wil­son

An un­re­lent­ing T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) pres­i­dent Idi Stew­art said yes­ter­day they are ready to ri­ot if that’s what it takes to en­sure health care work­ers re­ceive all out­stand­ing monies and ben­e­fits. Tak­ing their protest to the en­trance of the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, Stew­art re­it­er­at­ed that if by Ju­ly 1 Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh fails to meet with them there will be a mass demon­stra­tion from Queens Park Sa­van­nah to the Min­istry’s head of­fice.

This, he said, will be fol­lowed by nurs­es and mid­wives em­bark­ing on va­ca­tion leave. Stew­art then went to the Point Fortin Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal for led a sim­i­lar one-hour protest with health care work­ers.

Al­though North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) CEO Davlin Thomas an­nounced that all health work­ers would be paid out­stand­ing in­cre­ments in the com­ing weeks, Stew­art said that was not suf­fi­cient to put an end to their protests.

“We want to let him know even though the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance came and save NCHRA for their years of fail­ure to pay nurs­es and mid­wives and oth­er health care work­ers all in­cre­ments, all gra­tu­ity pay­ments, the oth­er RHAs are wait­ing, the staff in oth­er RHAs are wait­ing. So that is why we are say­ing 100 per cent could nev­er be enough be­cause that is a hun­dred per cent for one RHA…”

He said more than two months ago they sent a pro­pos­al on be­half of nurs­es and mid­wives for health in­sur­ance, a death ben­e­fit if they die in the line of du­ty and a haz­ard al­lowance, but to date, all they re­ceived was an ac­knowl­edge­ment from the per­ma­nent.

He added that it was un­for­tu­nate that they found mon­ey to pay work­ers on­ly af­ter they en­gaged in mass demon­stra­tions.

“Are you al­ways go­ing to say and I guess the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert stat­ed that we will keep hold­ing back ba­si­cal­ly un­til per­sons come out and demon­strate. I ent see no­body demon­strat­ing so monies will not be paid. As long as peo­ple ri­ot peo­ple will they then start be­ing paid so if is ri­ot you want is ri­ot you will get.”

Oth­er is­sues they want to raise with the min­is­ter in the re­quest­ed meet­ing are per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment, stu­dent nurs­es stipend, ve­hi­cles be­ing used to trans­port pa­tients with­out the re­quired am­bu­lance li­cense, and the non-in­volve­ment of nurs­es and mid­wives at the de­ci­sion ta­ble.

“We will not re­lent. We will not wa­ver. We have no fear, we have no favour from any po­lit­i­cal par­ty or any per­son…” he added.