Chikungunya and influenza are taking a toll on T&T's workforce and employers need to begin dialogue with trade unions on how to deal with the situation, Sati Gajadhar-Inniss, vice president of the Oilfield Workers' Trade Union (OWTU), told the T&T Guardian yesterday."Employers have to find ways of understanding and having dialogue instead of just looking at it as employees having lost time from work and things like that. They need to consider ways of getting the work done while also understanding employees needs and situations at this time," she said in an interview on the sidelines of a seminar on HIV/Aids hosted by the Ministry of Labour and the National HIV/Aids Workplace Advocacy and Sustainability Centre (HASC) at the Trinidad Hilton and Conference Center.
According to the Ministry of Health statistics, up to September there were 42 confirmed cases of chikungunya in T&T. Gajadhar-Innis said she had herself only recently recovered from that virus.
She said that she also got the chikungunya virus recently."There are a lot of people away from work because of chikungunya. Some people are away from work for seven days or more. I was ill for seven days because of this and I am still not a hundred per cent well," she said.
Gajadhar-Innis warned that diseases like Ebola, chikungunya and dengue will have an adverse effect on productivity in the workplace and the only way to manage that problem is through dialogue with the workers' representatives to find ways of getting work done."The employers will only look at it as loss of productivity and not necessarily as this is an issue that will last a while," she said.
She referred to the Jamaican experience where that Government declared a state of national emergency because of the chikungunya outbreak."We need to manage it from the star. Caribbean islands like Jamaica have declared from a government standpoint that there is a lack of productivity because of the virus and are not blaming other issues. We in this county need to look at that and not hide around the fact that people are being treated privately or in government institutions," she said.
She said citizens of T&T do not know the actual number of patients with the virus.Gajadhar-Innis said she paid over $400 for dengue and chikungunya tests and it was an additional financial burden to workers." I think we need to discuss this openly and how we should treat with it," she said.Dr Giovanni di Cola, director, ILO Decent Work Team and Office for the Caribbean, in his contribution to the seminar said recently there had been more emphasis on newer diseases like chikungunya and Ebola and this had put Hiv/Aids on the back burner."We have more and more communicable diseases and challenges that have come from abroad over the last few months like Ebola and chikungunya and we have not been thinking of Hiv/Aids issue," he said.