DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Faced with what they call a “ter­ri­fy­ing” si­lence from the Gov­ern­ment and a pub­lic health sys­tem on the verge of col­lapse, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) has di­rect­ed its mem­ber­ship to down tools the mo­ment their eight-hour shifts end un­less they are paid full over­time. The in­dus­tri­al di­rec­tive fol­lows ex­plo­sive al­le­ga­tions of a “rack­et” lev­elled against nurs­ing staff by North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

“It has left a very un­com­fort­able, un­safe en­vi­ron­ment for all pa­tients with­in the NCRHA,” stat­ed TTNNA Pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s St Au­gus­tine of­fice yes­ter­day.

The brief­ing was called to ad­dress Gopeesingh’s sug­ges­tion that nurs­es were en­gag­ing in “cor­rup­tion” with­in the “pool” sys­tem—an ex­tra-du­ty arrange­ment de­signed to plug staffing gaps.

Ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port, Gopeesingh re­vealed that warn­ing let­ters were is­sued to var­i­ous de­part­ment heads for al­low­ing a “haem­or­rhage” of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, with some nurs­es re­port­ed­ly tak­ing home be­tween $60,000 and $80,000 over a three-month pe­ri­od. Stu­art, how­ev­er, dis­missed the con­tro­ver­sy as a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion, in­sist­ing that the pay­ments were for le­git­i­mate work per­formed un­der gru­elling con­di­tions.

“So there­fore, since Dr Tim Gopeesingh is find­ing that the pool rates and the pool pay­ments are too high, well then be­gin to pay us over­time,” Stu­art chal­lenged. “That may ease his frus­tra­tion. That may ease his bur­den. It’s go­ing to be a high­er bill, of course, but he has called this up­on him­self.”

In a for­mal in­struc­tion to the na­tion’s nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel, Stu­art man­dat­ed that all ex­tra-du­ty com­pen­sa­tion must now be processed as over­time.

“Do not al­low the (Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties) RHAs to pres­sure you and man­date you to work for any flat rate go­ing for­ward. You de­serve over­time rates. And we will be fil­ing sev­er­al court ac­tions go­ing for­ward for any in­sti­tu­tion that de­nies nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel over­time rates.”

The union pres­i­dent fur­ther rub­bished claims of ad­min­is­tra­tive ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, pre­dict­ing that the cur­rent “hul­la­baloo” would yield no ac­tu­al ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing.

“Noth­ing will come of it be­cause these per­sons le­git­i­mate­ly worked ex­tra du­ty,” he said.

The union is al­so push­ing back against claims that it is not the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive for nurs­es, main­tain­ing that it is cer­ti­fied by the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board and rep­re­sents work­ers across all re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

Be­yond the im­me­di­ate dis­pute over the pool sys­tem, a deep­er sys­temic is­sue per­sists. With salary ne­go­ti­a­tions stalled at 2013 lev­els, the union is prepar­ing to take its griev­ances to the streets. On April 10, nurs­es are ex­pect­ed to as­sem­ble at the Min­istry of Health be­fore march­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance to de­mand a res­o­lu­tion to the decade-long wage gap.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so brac­ing for a po­ten­tial le­gal show­down, amid claims that the Gov­ern­ment may seek an in­junc­tion against it.

“We hope with all our hearts and minds that the Gov­ern­ment that is filled with labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives, packed with labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives as min­is­ters, as ju­nior min­is­ters, would not fall in­to the trap where you can­not con­trol a sit­u­a­tion and you re­sort to muz­zling work­ers.”

“If they fail to re­fute it, and it gen­uine­ly is on the cards, it will sig­nal a dark day not on­ly with­in the health­care sys­tem but for Trinidad and To­ba­go as a whole, as a democ­ra­cy.”

Stu­art fur­ther is­sued a poignant re­minder to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who were once labour lead­ers them­selves, in­clud­ing Clyde El­der, Ernesto Ke­sar and Leroy Bap­tiste, urg­ing them not to be­tray their roots.

“All we ask of you is to re­mem­ber and whis­per in the ear of per­sons like the Prime Min­is­ter, whis­per in the ear of per­sons like the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, whis­per in the ear of per­sons like the Min­is­ter of Health and sig­nal to them, speak to labour, speak to the union. We want di­a­logue. We don’t want this im­passe to con­tin­ue. We want a res­o­lu­tion. We are see­ing the harm this is caus­ing.”

The TTNNA’s de­mands are clear: a com­mit­ment to salary in­creas­es and a de­fin­i­tive plan to ad­dress the gap be­tween their cur­rent 2013-based pay and mod­ern cost-of-liv­ing re­al­i­ties. The union has la­belled the State’s lack of re­sponse a “dere­lic­tion of du­ty,” while call­ing for the re­moval of Gopeesingh.

“If the Prime Min­is­ter, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, un­der­stands what is hap­pen­ing with­in the NCRHA she would put pa­tients above Dr Tim Gopeesingh’s ego,” Stu­art re­marked.

Mean­while, a se­nior of­fi­cial at the au­thor­i­ty, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, de­fend­ed the le­git­i­ma­cy of the pool sys­tem, not­ing that even doc­tors have over­time built in­to their salaries. The of­fi­cial fur­ther al­leged a cul­ture of ver­bal abuse at the in­sti­tu­tion, claim­ing a se­nior nurse suf­fered a heart at­tack and was ward­ed as re­cent­ly as Fri­day fol­low­ing a con­fronta­tion with Gopeesingh.

Ef­forts to reach Gopeesingh, along with the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Health, were un­suc­cess­ful.