Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art is rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns over re­ports that the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) is mov­ing to re­cruit more than 100 mid­wives from In­dia, de­scrib­ing the de­vel­op­ment as both in­ad­e­quate and dis­re­spect­ful to lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

The re­port­ed re­cruit­ment dri­ve comes at a time of mount­ing ten­sion with­in the NCRHA, as nurs­es con­tin­ue to protest long­stand­ing staffing short­ages, stalled salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and work­ing con­di­tions many de­scribe as un­ten­able.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Stu­art said while the au­thor­i­ty has be­gun hir­ing some lo­cal nurs­ing per­son­nel, the num­bers fall far short of what is re­quired to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the cri­sis.

“A num­ber of things have hap­pened, and it has ac­tu­al­ly got­ten worse,” Stu­art said.

“While the ma­jor­i­ty of nurs­ing per­son­nel are on du­ty, the short­age of staff re­mains. What they’ve done so far is re­al­ly a drop in the buck­et.”

He said even as a small num­ber of nurs­es are brought in­to the sys­tem, re­ports sug­gest a par­al­lel plan to re­cruit over 100 mid­wives from In­dia, an ap­proach he strong­ly crit­i­cised.

“We are hear­ing that over a hun­dred mid­wives are in process to be­gin work­ing with­in the es­tab­lish­ment, and they are plan­ning to pay these mid­wives even more; that is an in­sult to our lo­cal­ly trained nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel,” he said.

Stu­art al­so ques­tioned the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of re­ly­ing on for­eign re­cruit­ment, point­ing to pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences with in­ter­na­tion­al nurs­es from coun­tries such as In­dia, the Philip­pines and Nige­ria.

Ac­cord­ing to him, many of these pro­fes­sion­als use Trinidad and To­ba­go as a step­ping stone to se­cure em­ploy­ment in larg­er mar­kets like the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States.

“Even­tu­al­ly, they would leave for green­er pas­tures,” he warned, adding that lan­guage bar­ri­ers may al­so pose chal­lenges in pa­tient care and in­te­gra­tion in­to the lo­cal health­care sys­tem.

The TTNNA head main­tained that the sit­u­a­tion at the NCRHA has ef­fec­tive­ly been a “con­tin­u­ous health emer­gency” for years, dri­ven large­ly by chron­ic un­der­staffing.

“We have re­peat­ed­ly iden­ti­fied that there is a se­ri­ous con­cern… the short­age of nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel has been on­go­ing for over a decade,” Stu­art said.

He paint­ed a trou­bling pic­ture of the con­se­quences, cit­ing cas­es of pro­longed wait­ing times, med­ical er­rors and pre­ventable ad­verse out­comes.

Stu­art added that the pub­lic of­ten mis­di­rects blame to­wards front­line work­ers, un­aware that sys­temic de­fi­cien­cies are at the root of the prob­lem.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ments al­so fol­low re­cent rev­e­la­tions by NCRHA chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who dis­closed that a “rack­et” in­volv­ing ex­ces­sive over­time pay­ments had been un­cov­ered with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Gopeesingh, some nurs­es re­port­ed­ly earned be­tween $60,000 and $80,000 over a three-month pe­ri­od due to hun­dreds of over­time hours worked.

The sit­u­a­tion has prompt­ed the is­suance of warn­ing let­ters to sev­er­al de­part­ment heads, amid con­cerns that mil­lions of dol­lars in tax­pay­ers’ funds have been lost since 2023 due to poor over­sight.

How­ev­er, Stu­art sug­gest­ed that the fo­cus on over­time pay­ments ig­nores the un­der­ly­ing is­sue.

“The rea­son for the over­time is the short­age of staff,” he im­plied, ar­gu­ing that with­out ad­e­quate re­cruit­ment and re­ten­tion strate­gies, such costs are in­evitable.

A key point of con­tention for the TTNNA is what it de­scribes as the un­der­util­i­sa­tion of lo­cal­ly trained nurs­es.

“There are quite a num­ber of nurs­ing per­son­nel await­ing em­ploy­ment, peo­ple who have spent their own re­sources to train and are now sit­ting at home or work­ing out­side the pro­fes­sion,” Stu­art said.

“It is re­al­ly an in­dict­ment on the NCRHA.”

He added that the au­thor­i­ty’s ap­proach of re­dis­trib­ut­ing ex­ist­ing staff to new fa­cil­i­ties, rather than hir­ing suf­fi­cient num­bers, has fur­ther weak­ened al­ready strained de­part­ments.

Stu­art in­di­cat­ed that the an­tic­i­pat­ed for­eign mid­wives are ex­pect­ed to be de­ployed pri­mar­i­ly at the Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, one of the fa­cil­i­ties re­port­ed­ly hard­est hit by staff short­ages.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion has been forced to re­ly on in­for­mal chan­nels for such in­for­ma­tion, as en­gage­ment with NCRHA man­age­ment has been lim­it­ed.

The nurs­es’ as­so­ci­a­tion is now prepar­ing to es­ca­late its re­sponse, with plans to host a press con­fer­ence in the com­ing days.

He al­so is­sued a broad­er warn­ing about the state of health­care de­liv­ery in Trinidad and To­ba­go, cau­tion­ing against any at­tempts to si­lence dis­sent.

“We hope the Gov­ern­ment is not plan­ning any­thing to re­strict the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms of per­sons who are sim­ply ar­tic­u­lat­ing their dis­plea­sure,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse from Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, as well as NCRHA chair­man Gopeesingh, on the claims made by Stu­art.