RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The dis­missal of 42 dai­ly-paid work­ers from the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) will be con­sid­ered at a hear­ing at the Min­istry of Labour’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice to­day, as the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) seeks their re­in­state­ment.

NUGFW South Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Ja­son Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia that the union was ad­vised yes­ter­day that the hear­ing would be­gin at 10.30 am at the min­istry’s St James Street of­fice.

Gor­don said the union would be rep­re­sent­ed by him­self, di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Carl St Rose, pres­i­dent gen­er­al and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ad­vis­er Christo­pher Shep­pard, and oth­er branch and di­vi­sion of­fi­cers.

The union will chal­lenge the work­ers’ ter­mi­na­tion, say­ing they were sent home with­out due process and in breach of es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pro­ce­dures and the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act. The work­ers re­ceived dis­missal let­ters on Oc­to­ber 16.

Gor­don said the union be­lieves the work­ers should be re­in­stat­ed, ar­gu­ing their ab­sence has left staffing gaps across the au­thor­i­ty. He re­ject­ed claims that they were un­pro­duc­tive, say­ing re­main­ing em­ploy­ees were tak­ing on ex­tra du­ties, work­ing longer hours and per­form­ing tasks out­side their job de­scrip­tions.

He cit­ed the laun­dry de­part­ment, where work­ers re­spon­si­ble for wash­ing, clean­ing and fold­ing linen were now al­so be­ing asked to trans­port it to hos­pi­tal wards and oth­er de­part­ments. Some of the dis­missed em­ploy­ees had pre­vi­ous­ly han­dled dis­tri­b­u­tion, he said.

Gor­don said the work­ers al­so per­formed gen­er­al main­te­nance, trans­port­ed meals from the kitchen to wards, cleaned wards and op­er­at­ing the­atres, main­tained grounds and did paint­ing.

“If per­sons vis­it the RHA com­pound right now, they will see the void that is left by those said work­ers that they are say­ing are un­pro­duc­tive. Those are very pro­duc­tive work­ers,” he said.

Gor­don said su­per­vi­sors had told the union that de­part­ments were short-staffed and ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ees were dou­bling up on du­ties. He al­so al­leged the dis­missals amount­ed to po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion but pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence to sup­port the claim.

The union said it had iden­ti­fied some con­tract work­ers but was still in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether they had been en­gaged to per­form du­ties pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out by the dis­missed em­ploy­ees.

Gor­don said the union hoped to­day’s hear­ing would vin­di­cate the work­ers and re­sult in their re­turn to work from Thurs­day.

The SWRHA has not pub­licly com­ment­ed on the dis­missals. A source told Guardian Me­dia that some of the work­ers had been hired in 2024 and that their jobs were re­dun­dant.

The dis­missals fol­low up­heaval at the au­thor­i­ty, in­clud­ing the mass res­ig­na­tion of board mem­bers in Oc­to­ber. Ear­li­er de­par­tures in­clud­ed chair­man Anil Go­sine, who re­signed af­ter 15 months, cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons, and deputy chair­man Natasha Mooni­lal, whose res­ig­na­tion in Feb­ru­ary left the post va­cant.

Di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon and di­rec­tor Sinanan Dass al­so re­signed. Cha­toor­goon called on Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­view the au­thor­i­ty’s gov­er­nance.

The de­par­tures left two sit­ting board mem­bers, along­side chief ex­ec­u­tive Dr She­vanand Gopeesingh. They fol­lowed con­cerns about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the board and the chief ex­ec­u­tive, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions that board res­o­lu­tions were not be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.