JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) will roll out a 15-point ac­tion plan to its mem­ber­ship by the end of the week in re­sponse to the Health Min­is­ter’s claim that their march on Fri­day had no ef­fect on the health sec­tor.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at TTNNA’s War­ren Street, St Au­gus­tine of­fice yes­ter­day, nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said the com­ments made by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe that there was no cri­sis in the health sec­tor an­gered the nurs­es. He said that the com­ment forced an emer­gency meet­ing of the ex­ec­u­tive.

“We un­der­stand that surg­eries were post­poned, peo­ple’s clin­ics were can­celled, a num­ber of things hap­pened. Again, I must re­it­er­ate for the Min­is­ter of Health to in­di­cate that this is not a cri­sis. God for­bid that health­care work­ers be­gin to think out­side the box to force him to re­alise that this in­deed is a cri­sis.”

He said while there were thou­sands of health­care pro­fes­sion­als at Fri­day’s march, it was not the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ten­tion to dis­rupt any ser­vices, as the march, like oth­er times, was sched­uled to take place dur­ing the lunch hour.

Fri­day’s protest was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a de­ci­sion by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to re­duce nurs­es’ over­time hourly rates, known as pool, from $75 hourly to $60 hourly. Stu­art, dur­ing the protest, called on health­care work­ers to re­ject the new rates and to de­mand they be paid the time and a half, dou­ble time and triple time of­fered to all oth­er class­es of work­ers.

The march was al­so called to de­mand that the Gov­ern­ment keep its promise to be­gin wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent for pub­lic ser­vants. While mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) re­ceived the in­crease, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty work­ers did not.

Stu­art said yes­ter­day: “The Gov­ern­ment is not will­ing to say, well, look, in three months’ time or in four months’ time, you all will get a salary in­crease, so we can go back to our mem­ber­ship, we can go back to health­care work­ers and tell them, just hold strain. They are say­ing noth­ing, and that is what re­al­ly is the trou­bling sit­u­a­tion.”

While the TTNNA did not re­veal its plan, Stu­art was adamant that his as­so­ci­a­tion was not ad­vo­cat­ing for any per­ceived in­dus­tri­al ac­tion that could jeop­ar­dise the health and treat­ment of pa­tients.