Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Health work­ers, who Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo say will not re­ceive back­pay this month, are threat­en­ing to “down tools” and per­form on­ly the “bare min­i­mum” from the week of Christ­mas in­to the new year.

The frus­trat­ed re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) em­ploy­ees are al­so invit­ing Tan­coo and his staff to “come and care for the sick” at the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

They told Guardian Me­dia that Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion is a “slap in the face” to front­line health­care work­ers.

One South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) work­er said, “Well, this Christ­mas we will down tools, some of us will come to work, and we will do the bare min­i­mum, and there are some who wouldn’t come. This will be from De­cem­ber 22 to 31. And we think Mr Tan­coo and his team can take care of the sick pa­tients.”

The work­er, who asked not to be named, said sim­i­lar ac­tion is be­ing con­sid­ered at dif­fer­ent RHAs.

Guardian Me­dia was told oth­er health work­ers are plan­ning a day of “To­tal Health­care,” where staff will “rest” and “re­flect on their im­por­tance and val­ue.”

Asked which work­ers are con­sid­er­ing this ac­tion, the work­er said, “Phar­ma­cists, phar­ma­cy as­sis­tants, phle­botomists, and clerks.”

While Min­istry of Health em­ploy­ees with­in the RHAs will re­ceive their ad­vanced cash back­pay by De­cem­ber 23 and have their salaries ad­just­ed in the new year, pub­lic of­fi­cers who trans­ferred in­to the RHAs, along with those hired di­rect­ly by them, won’t be as for­tu­nate.

Some of those work­ers who will not re­ceive the back­pay are mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and ex­pect the same ben­e­fits as their col­leagues.

In a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas con­firmed that Min­istry of Health em­ploy­ees will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­ceive their back­pay this month un­der the agree­ment signed with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

She not­ed, how­ev­er, that work­ers who trans­ferred from the Pub­lic Ser­vice in­to the RHA will re­quire a sep­a­rate Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment be­fore their salaries and ar­rears can be processed. Thomas said the PSA had writ­ten to all RHA CEOs re­quest­ing that these em­ploy­ees re­ceive a por­tion of their back­pay by De­cem­ber 23.

But Tan­coo lat­er clar­i­fied that on­ly work­ers cov­ered un­der the De­cem­ber 2 agree­ment are el­i­gi­ble for pay­ment at this time, stress­ing that such dis­burse­ments re­quire ad­vance plan­ning and must align with the coun­try’s cash flow.

An af­fect­ed health work­er said yes­ter­day that they all feel dis­re­spect­ed.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar cam­paigned on treat­ing health­care work­ers well, so now you can’t tell me Mr Tan­coo for­got about health­care work­ers and front-line work­ers.”

An­oth­er work­er said the reded­i­ca­tion of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal is a fur­ther strain on the sys­tem, and again, they will be asked to put more ef­fort in while still work­ing on 2013 salaries.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that some work­ers took loans, ex­pect­ing their cash ad­vance back­pay in De­cem­ber. They al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with their union, as work­ers claimed they have not been able to speak with any­one since Wednes­day.

RHA work­er and for­mer PSA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Oral Saun­ders said, “Min­is­ter Tan­coo must be made aware that the suc­cess of his Gov­ern­ment and the PSA, in agree­ing to the 10% salary in­crease along with an ad­vance pay­ment to all work­ers un­der the PSA, was met with great cel­e­bra­tion and fi­nan­cial men­tal re­lief. Health­care work­ers in the RHAs who worked dur­ing our coun­try’s dark­est days of the world­wide pan­dem­ic did not dis­crim­i­nate in their treat­ment to ‘John Pub­lic.’ We cared for all!”

Saun­ders said work­ers are hop­ing the Prime Min­is­ter in­ter­venes.

“No moth­er will be com­fort­able with one sib­ling re­ceiv­ing and open­ing a gift on Christ­mas Day, while an­oth­er gets noth­ing, de­spite liv­ing in the same house­hold.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) CEO An­geli­na Ram­per­sad-Pierre ex­plained that di­rec­tion on com­pen­sa­tion, back­pay or salaries would have to come from the min­istry. She said she could not com­ment fur­ther un­til that comes.

SWRHA CEO Dr Robin Sinanan re­quest­ed more time to ap­prise him­self of the mat­ter. The CEOs of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) could not be reached.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas were un­suc­cess­ful.

But T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said he will con­tact Thomas to of­fer his union’s sup­port in lob­by­ing for the RHA work­ers to get their back­pay and ad­just­ed salary in­creas­es.