Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Chair­man of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), Dr Tim Gopeesingh, has sub­mit­ted a de­tailed re­port out­lin­ing the Au­thor­i­ty’s per­for­mance over the first eight months of the cur­rent Board’s tenure, high­light­ing sweep­ing fi­nan­cial re­forms, strength­ened gov­er­nance, and ex­pand­ed health­care de­liv­ery.

The re­port, ad­dressed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was made pub­lic yes­ter­day via the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Face­book page.

In it, Dr Gopeesingh said the Au­thor­i­ty in­her­it­ed an in­sti­tu­tion fac­ing “se­ri­ous and deeply root­ed chal­lenges” at the time of his ap­point­ment, in­clud­ing debt ex­ceed­ing $350 mil­lion, ir­reg­u­lar ex­pen­di­ture, and pro­cure­ment breach­es that, he said, en­abled mis­man­age­ment and, in some in­stances, cor­rup­tion to per­sist.

He said the Board moved quick­ly to sta­bilise op­er­a­tions through tighter fi­nan­cial con­trols and gov­er­nance re­forms.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, more than $150 mil­lion has been iden­ti­fied, pre­vent­ed, or re­cov­ered from im­prop­er pay­ments and ir­reg­u­lar prac­tices. The NCRHA al­so re­duced its out­stand­ing debt to un­der $150 mil­lion with­in the eight-month pe­ri­od and sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut the num­ber of sup­pli­ers.

Among the most sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures was a re­struc­tur­ing of the nurs­ing “pool” over­time sys­tem, which the re­port es­ti­mates pre­vi­ous­ly cost about $36 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. The Au­thor­i­ty said it dis­man­tled ir­reg­u­lar prac­tices with­in the sys­tem as part of broad­er cost-con­tain­ment ef­forts.

The re­port al­so points to op­er­a­tional gains, in­clud­ing in­creased sur­gi­cal ca­pac­i­ty—from three to sev­en func­tion­ing op­er­at­ing the­atres—ex­pand­ed di­ag­nos­tic ser­vices, and re­duced wait­ing times in ac­ci­dent and emer­gency de­part­ments, out­pa­tient clin­ics, and for elec­tive pro­ce­dures.

Re­cruit­ment is al­so un­der way, with plans to hire 100 nurs­es and 55 doc­tors to strength­en staffing lev­els across the sys­tem.

How­ev­er, the re­port’s re­lease comes against a back­drop of grow­ing in­dus­tri­al un­rest in the health­care sec­tor.

On Fri­day, hun­dreds of nurs­es staged a protest in Port-of-Spain, voic­ing frus­tra­tion over wages, staffing lev­els, and work­ing con­di­tions. The demon­stra­tion was led by Idi Stu­art, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion.

The protest fol­lowed the NCRHA’s de­ci­sion to re­duce over­time “pool” rates from $75 to $60 per hour, a move that has sparked wide­spread dis­sat­is­fac­tion among nurs­es.

Ad­dress­ing demon­stra­tors out­side the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Stu­art urged health­care work­ers to re­ject the re­vised pool sys­tem and in­stead de­mand stan­dard over­time com­pen­sa­tion, in­clud­ing time-and-a-half, dou­ble-time and triple-time rates sim­i­lar to oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

The wage dis­pute is com­pound­ed by long­stand­ing griev­ances over salary ne­go­ti­a­tions. Ahead of the last gen­er­al elec­tion, the gov­ern­ment pledged a 10 per cent wage in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants. While Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) mem­bers re­ceived the ad­just­ment, Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty work­ers were ex­clud­ed, with au­thor­i­ties stat­ing that on­ly PSA-rep­re­sent­ed em­ploy­ees qual­i­fied.

Health­care work­ers were in­stead di­rect­ed to ne­go­ti­ate with in­di­vid­ual RHA boards, a po­si­tion Stu­art con­tin­ues to chal­lenge, ar­gu­ing that the orig­i­nal com­mit­ment ap­plied to all pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, in­clud­ing those in the health sys­tem.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has since crit­i­cised both the re­port and the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said: “It is clear that the Min­is­ter, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, the NCRHA Chair­man, Dr Tim D Gopeesingh, and this UNC Gov­ern­ment are to­tal­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ties of the na­tion.”

She ref­er­enced Fri­day’s protest, not­ing that “hun­dreds of nurs­es took to the streets of Port-of-Spain, protest­ing in the blaz­ing sun, voic­ing frus­tra­tion over staffing short­ages, work­ing con­di­tions, and un­re­solved pay is­sues fol­low­ing weeks of small­er strikes across var­i­ous health fa­cil­i­ties in the coun­try.”

Beck­les added that the sit­u­a­tion re­flects a deep­er cri­sis in the health sec­tor, say­ing the gov­ern­ment is fail­ing to ac­knowl­edge “re­al and grow­ing strain,” de­spite es­ca­lat­ing dis­rup­tion.

She al­so crit­i­cised Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, ac­cus­ing him of down­play­ing the sever­i­ty of the protests.

“Dr Bo­doe stood in Par­lia­ment and de­nied what un­fold­ed on Fri­day. I have to won­der whether Dr Bo­doe ac­tu­al­ly re­ports to work at the Min­istry’s head­quar­ters, as the nurs­es’ calls for him to ap­pear from hid­ing went unan­swered,” Beck­les said.

Beck­les fur­ther ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s en­gage­ment with health­care work­ers, ask­ing: “Why hasn’t the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance met with nurs­es? Can Dr Gopeesingh even meet with nurs­es? And when will nurs­es see and feel the sup­port from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar? Are they not de­serv­ing?”