Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter 

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Chair­man of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), Anil Go­sine, is seek­ing to re­as­sure the pub­lic that con­tin­gency mea­sures are in place to pro­tect pa­tient care, as nurs­es pre­pare for a planned protest on Fri­day.

The demon­stra­tion, an­nounced by Idi Stu­art, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), comes amid an es­ca­lat­ing stand­off be­tween the union and lead­er­ship at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Go­sine said the SWRHA has been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing staffing lev­els in re­cent days and has so far record­ed min­i­mal dis­rup­tion.

“Over the week­end, from Thurs­day to to­day, we have been mon­i­tor­ing ab­sen­teeism, and it’s very low at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

“So the nurs­es are com­ing out, and if they’re not, we fill the gaps from the pool and through over­time. So the ser­vice has con­tin­ued.”

With a ma­jor street demon­stra­tion sched­uled for Fri­day, Go­sine ac­knowl­edged un­cer­tain­ty about the scale of the ac­tion but em­pha­sised that proac­tive steps have al­ready been tak­en.

“Con­cern­ing Fri­day the tenth, we’ve put things in place. I don’t know how big this would be, but we are pre­pared,” he said.

“We have a good rap­port with our staff, and we’ll en­sure that pa­tients re­ceive the ser­vice they re­quire.”

The planned protest is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in a widen­ing dis­pute be­tween nurs­es and health au­thor­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the NCRHA, where ten­sions have in­ten­si­fied over stag­nant salaries, staffing short­ages and work­ing con­di­tions.

It was pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that the NCRHA un­cov­ered an al­leged scheme in which some nurs­es re­ceived be­tween $60,000 and $80,000 over three months by work­ing hun­dreds of over­time hours.

Since 2023, sev­er­al de­part­ment heads have re­ceived warn­ing let­ters for per­mit­ting the prac­tice.

NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the ex­ploita­tion of the over­time sys­tem has been halt­ed and that stricter pro­ce­dures will be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Stu­art con­firmed that Fri­day’s protest will run from 11 am to 2 pm, be­gin­ning at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, pro­ceed­ing to the Min­istry of Health, and end­ing at the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Adding to con­cerns, Stu­art told Guardian Me­dia that the staffing sit­u­a­tion at the NCRHA re­mains crit­i­cal de­spite ear­li­er as­sur­ances.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion has learnt that de­spite ini­tial re­ports by the NCRHA that they were ad­dress­ing staff short­ages by hir­ing 50 per­sons, which was al­ready in­ad­e­quate, they have in fact on­ly hired 21 ju­nior nurs­ing per­son­nel,” he said.

Stu­art ar­gued that the short­fall con­tin­ues to place sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on front­line work­ers.

“So the in­sti­tu­tion re­mains crit­i­cal­ly short, and the staffing cri­sis con­tin­ues, as nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel will no longer tol­er­ate com­pro­mis­ing pa­tient care due to per­sis­tent short­ages,” he added.

Last week, NCRHA man­age­ment be­gan hir­ing ad­di­tion­al nurs­es to help ease staffing chal­lenges aris­ing from re­cent sick­out ac­tion by work­ers.

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), David Ab­du­lah, said the cri­sis re­flects long­stand­ing struc­tur­al fail­ures in the health­care sys­tem.

“There is a mas­sive short­age of nurs­es in our health­care sys­tem,” Ab­du­lah said, ref­er­enc­ing fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly cit­ed by the health min­is­ter, in­di­cat­ing near­ly 1,900 va­can­cies.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, he ar­gued that the short­age un­der­mines both pa­tient care and work­ing con­di­tions.

“One nurse hav­ing to care for too many pa­tients re­duces the qual­i­ty time avail­able for each pa­tient, while in­creas­ing stress on the nurse,” he said, adding that chron­ic un­der­staffing in­evitably leads to ex­ces­sive over­time.

Ab­du­lah al­so raised con­cerns about wages, not­ing that many nurs­es re­main on 2013 salary lev­els de­spite ris­ing liv­ing costs.

“This is not de­cent work,” he said, adding that nurs­es—par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of their role dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic—de­serve mean­ing­ful salary ad­just­ments.

He warned that poor con­di­tions are con­tribut­ing to mi­gra­tion among health­care work­ers, fur­ther wors­en­ing short­ages, and crit­i­cised suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions for fail­ing to re­solve the is­sue.

“The strug­gle by our na­tion’s nurs­es goes to the heart of what our so­ci­ety ought to val­ue—the dig­ni­ty of all labour,” he said, de­scrib­ing nurs­es as the “back­bone of health­care.”

Ab­du­lah al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment and re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties to ur­gent­ly en­gage the TTNNA in ne­go­ti­a­tions, warn­ing that con­tin­ued in­ac­tion could deep­en the cri­sis.