The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has re­ject­ed claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that staff lock­ers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) were forcibly bro­ken in­to, or that per­son­al items were dis­card­ed.

A video shared on­line al­leges that the re­moval of staff be­long­ings was car­ried out in a vin­dic­tive man­ner with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

The footage has emerged amid on­go­ing ten­sions be­tween health­care work­ers and NCRHA man­age­ment over a de­ci­sion to re­duce over­time rates from $75 to $60 per hour. It al­so fol­lows a re­cent protest led by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, which has called for the re­ver­sal of the over­time ad­just­ment and greater clar­i­ty on salary in­creas­es, not­ing that many work­ers re­main on 2013 wage rates.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the NCRHA said the lock­ers shown in the video were sched­uled for re­moval and re­place­ment as part of planned fa­cil­i­ty up­grades. It said de­part­ment heads were for­mal­ly no­ti­fied in ad­vance and in­struct­ed to ad­vise staff to re­move per­son­al be­long­ings be­fore the process be­gan.

“The Au­thor­i­ty fur­ther notes that the cir­cu­la­tion and fram­ing of this video re­flect a lev­el of mis­chief and, at worst, a de­gree of vi­cious­ness, as it seeks to dis­tort a rou­tine, au­tho­rised process and cre­ate un­nec­es­sary alarm among staff and the wider pub­lic,” the state­ment said.

The NCRHA claimed the video was record­ed and cir­cu­lat­ed by a staffer who had pre­vi­ous­ly been cau­tioned for mis­con­duct, in­clud­ing an in­ci­dent in which the in­di­vid­ual was found sell­ing items on the ramp of the Emer­gency De­part­ment dur­ing work hours, in breach of NCRHA pol­i­cy.

The au­thor­i­ty said such be­hav­iour would not be tol­er­at­ed.