JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

Head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, says hos­pi­tal work­ers are con­stant­ly un­der threat on and off the job.

Stu­art is call­ing for tighter se­cu­ri­ty at the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals, af­ter Sun­day night's shoot­ing in­ci­dent at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, in which one man was killed on the com­pound, while three oth­ers were gunned down ear­li­er in Gon­za­les.

Ac­cord­ing to Stu­art, staff mem­bers are of­ten threat­ened to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the where­abouts of pa­tients. 

“Be­cause the hos­pi­tal staff op­er­ate and live with­in the very zones where this vi­o­lence is tak­ing place, their lives are be­ing threat­ened for in­for­ma­tion, or threat­ened to iden­ti­fy where ri­val gang mem­bers are be­ing lo­cat­ed and threat­ened to as­sist in what­ev­er ac­tiv­i­ty they [the gangs] in­tend to com­mit,” Stu­art re­vealed.

The Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent is ad­vo­cat­ing for a Haz­ardous Al­lowance for hos­pi­tal staff.

He says such a pro­vi­sion is made for Po­lice, Prison and Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cers and the same should be done for staff work­ing in high-risk ar­eas.

“We need to find ways that staff and their fam­i­lies will be com­fort­ed in case some­thing un­to­ward hap­pens to them,” Stu­art main­tains.

“Far too many nurs­es have been in­jured in line of du­ty, and far too many nurs­es’ lives have been threat­ened by these very same gang mem­bers.  Far too many nurs­es have been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed,” he stat­ed.

“What we are rec­om­mend­ing is not some­thing unique,” he says.  “If nurs­ing per­son­al are in­jured, there should be some pro­vi­sion to take care of the staff.”

Idi Stu­art told Guardian Me­dia that cur­rent­ly, the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties are ser­viced by pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms. He says the of­fi­cers are of­ten over­worked and un­der-paid and lack the mo­ti­va­tion to go be­yond se­cur­ing the build­ing.

He is sug­gest­ing that Gov­ern­ment move away from em­ploy­ing the pri­vate firms and in­stead utilise the MTS, as well as the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing & Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny.