JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) says it is con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) and its pres­i­dent, Idi Stu­art, over what it claims are dam­ag­ing al­le­ga­tions.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the NCRHA said the TTNNA had “de­lib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed the facts” sur­round­ing an op­er­a­tional ac­com­mo­da­tion “grace­ful­ly ex­tend­ed by the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Nurs­ing” to a small num­ber of nurs­es ex­pe­ri­enc­ing gen­uine health, per­son­al or trans­porta­tion chal­lenges.

On Tues­day, Stu­art threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against the NCRHA over what he claimed was the un­law­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of a four-hour work shift at the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty.

Re­spond­ing to the NCRHA’s threat of le­gal ac­tion, Stu­art said he was not in­tim­i­dat­ed.

“With re­gards to tak­ing le­gal ac­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion is un­con­cerned as this threat has been made nu­mer­ous times by the au­thor­i­ty. We do know that the present ad­min­is­tra­tion has no in­hi­bi­tion about wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on friv­o­lous law­suits that are doomed to fail. So we stand ready and will­ing to de­fend if need­ed. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the tax­pay­ers will be the losers,” he said.

He added: “All of their re­leas­es and prac­tices are struc­tured to in­tim­i­date per­sons from speak­ing out about the con­duct of the NCRHA. How­ev­er, they ought to know by now. The as­so­ci­a­tion nev­er went silent be­tween 2015 and April 2025. So, they ought not to be­lieve we will be si­lenced af­ter April 2025 with their con­tin­ued threats of law­suits and ‘ban­ning of protest’.”

Stu­art said the TTNNA had in­vit­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Bhadase See­ta­hal-Maraj to a meet­ing, which is ex­pect­ed to take place soon.

He added that while it has long been the prac­tice for nurs­es to work short­er shifts to com­plete their 40-hour work week, this had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly been for­malised as pol­i­cy.

In its state­ment, the NCRHA said it was un­for­tu­nate that the TTNNA chose to “pub­licly mis­con­strue and mis­rep­re­sent an in­ter­nal op­er­a­tional mat­ter” that af­fect­ed on­ly a small group of em­ploy­ees.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the TTNNA’s claims, not­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s elec­tions are due soon. It fur­ther point­ed out that the TTNNA is not the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union rep­re­sent­ing NCRHA staff.

Re­spond­ing to that claim, Stu­art said the TTNNA’s fail­ure to at­tain recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union sta­tus was due to re­peat­ed de­lays by the NCRHA.

“What they failed to do is in­form the pub­lic, the de­lay­ing prac­tices em­ployed by the NCRHA that has re­tard­ed the progress of the as­so­ci­a­tion in gain­ing RMU sta­tus for the last 11 years. In the usu­al style of the NCRHA’s press re­leas­es, they de­ny every­thing said by the union, and then ad­mit that they did in­deed cre­ate a four-hour shift,” he said.

Stu­art al­so called on nurs­es to re­ject the four-hour shift, ar­gu­ing that if the ex­pla­na­tions of­fered by the NCRHA and its chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, are to be be­lieved, then the shift does not ex­ist and there­fore has not been of­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned.