RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe is be­ing asked to in­ves­ti­gate re­ports of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, ha­rass­ment, and nepo­tism at the Med­ical Records De­part­ment of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, which is af­fect­ing the morale of staff.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that they first raised the is­sue on June 4, hop­ing for re­dress, but in­stead their con­cerns have been ig­nored with no re­dress or up­dates on the is­sues high­light­ed.

“In­ter­views were con­duct­ed with a se­lect few staff who had mat­ters be­fore the IR De­part­ment. Their con­cerns were heard, but as­sur­ances were giv­en, and no up­date has been passed along to those in­di­vid­u­als to date,” one work­er said.

Sources claimed that “is­sues of vic­tim­i­sa­tion and nepo­tism were still on­go­ing, even af­ter in­struc­tions were giv­en for lim­it­ed man­age­r­i­al func­tions to be car­ried out by said man­age­ment”.

An­oth­er staff mem­ber al­leged that there had been “re­ports of ha­rass­ment and false al­le­ga­tions to­wards mem­bers of staff who do not meet the re­quire­ments to be con­sid­ered to be in the in­ner cir­cle, while said cir­cle is giv­en free rein when it comes to work­ing hours, du­ties, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for ad­vance­ment and over­time”.

Staff al­so said there was “lit­tle to no trans­paren­cy when it comes to op­por­tu­ni­ties for act­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, where se­nior mem­bers of staff are over­looked and these op­por­tu­ni­ties are giv­en to those who are will­ing to be whistle­blow­ers for man­age­ment”.

Work­ers fur­ther claimed there has been “no change in the way the de­part­ment is be­ing man­aged, and staff are yet to re­ceive any re­dress for the prob­lem­at­ic man­age­r­i­al style”.

An­oth­er source point­ed to “a cou­ple get­ting to work to­geth­er in the RRHM of­fice, leav­ing by 12 to go to work ex­tra hours at health cen­tres”, ques­tion­ing what stan­dard of fair­ness was be­ing used in the de­part­ment.

Sev­er­al work­ers ex­pressed a loss of con­fi­dence in SWRHA. They claim a di­rec­tor of the board has been in­ter­fer­ing in the med­ical records busi­ness. “Due to his friend­ship with (name called), he spends his days in the of­fice of that man­ag­er, look­ing to ha­rass hard-work­ing doc­tors and staff.”

One work­er de­scribed this as “a se­ri­ous con­flict of in­ter­est” and called on the min­is­ter to in­ves­ti­gate.

Staff mem­bers said they were “fed up and ready to down tools”, adding that med­ical records staff went above and be­yond through COVID-19 when oth­er de­part­ments got to ro­tate and work from home, but med­ical records staff were all hands on deck 100 per cent.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter Bo­doe, who con­firmed that a meet­ing was held on Mon­day to ad­dress the is­sues.

Di­rec­tor at the SWRHA, Dr Anand Chat­ter­goon, re­ferred ques­tions to the chair­man of the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Anil Go­sine. When con­tact­ed, Go­sine said all of the is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed. He said the meet­ing, which took place on Mon­day, in­volved union rep­re­sen­ta­tives and man­age­ment.

“We had all the stake­hold­ers there, and we were sat­is­fied that there were im­prove­ments in all ar­eas. The phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture for the files is al­so be­ing re­viewed. The union rep­re­sen­ta­tive was present, and he agreed that every­thing is com­ing along. We have a time­line, and every­thing will be in place in time be­cause the union, staff and man­age­ment are all work­ing to­geth­er to re­solve is­sues,” he said.