RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A to­tal of 124 dai­ly-paid work­ers at the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) have been sent home, with the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) call­ing on the au­thor­i­ty’s man­age­ment to ex­plain the de­ci­sion and ad­dress con­cerns about the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees’ out­stand­ing over­time pay­ments.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, NUGFW South­ern Di­vi­sion Ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent Ja­son Gor­don said the work­ers re­port­ed for du­ty yes­ter­day but were in­formed that their ser­vices were no longer re­quired.

Gor­don said the work­ers re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the SWRHA’s Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment ad­vis­ing them that their tem­po­rary ca­su­al em­ploy­ment would end on Oc­to­ber 16.

He said the union was not con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the work­ers and was seek­ing an­swers from the au­thor­i­ty about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of their em­ploy­ment.

“We have 124 work­ers right now out of a job, out of a bread, and they have ab­solute­ly no one to reach out to in terms of man­age­ment,” Gor­don said.

He said the union was mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions on the work­ers’ be­half and was ap­peal­ing to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Health Min­is­ter, to clar­i­fy what had prompt­ed the de­ci­sion.

A let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 15 from the SWRHA, ad­dressed to a ca­su­al dai­ly-rat­ed tum­bler op­er­a­tor at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, states that the work­er’s tem­po­rary ca­su­al em­ploy­ment had been ex­tend­ed on­ly un­til Oc­to­ber 16, 2026.

The let­ter, signed by Act­ing Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Hu­man Re­sources Shellyann Jagdesingh, states that the work­er would be no­ti­fied if ser­vices were re­quired in the fu­ture.

Gor­don said the af­fect­ed work­ers had been em­ployed for vary­ing pe­ri­ods, with some dat­ing back to Feb­ru­ary or March 2024 and oth­ers be­gin­ning in April 2024.

He said they were dai­ly-paid work­ers un­der the union’s bar­gain­ing unit and re­ceived their wages fort­night­ly.

The work­ers, he ex­plained, per­form es­sen­tial sup­port and main­te­nance du­ties at health fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing clean­ing, paint­ing, pow­er wash­ing, cut­ting grass and car­ry­ing out gen­er­al main­te­nance.

Gor­don de­scribed them as a hard-work­ing group re­spon­si­ble for help­ing to main­tain the hos­pi­tal en­vi­ron­ment.

“There are a hun­dred and some­thing work­ers get­ting up to­mor­row not know­ing where the next dol­lar is com­ing from,” he said.

Gor­don al­so raised con­cerns about re­ports that some of the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees had out­stand­ing over­time pay­ments.

He said the work­ers had not re­ceived clear in­for­ma­tion about when any out­stand­ing sums would be paid or what arrange­ments, if any, had been made to set­tle those pay­ments.

Gor­don said the union in­tend­ed to for­mal­ly ap­proach the SWRHA in its ca­pac­i­ty as the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union to seek an ex­pla­na­tion and clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the way the mat­ter was han­dled.

He main­tained that man­age­ment should en­gage the bar­gain­ing unit on mat­ters af­fect­ing work­ers’ em­ploy­ment and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.

“If you have to send home work­ers, you must en­gage with the bar­gain­ing unit, the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union,” he said.

“You just get up ad hoc and just send home work­ers. That is not how, for good in­dus­tri­al peace, man­age­ment should op­er­ate.”

Gor­don called on the SWRHA to pro­vide an­swers to the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion to end their em­ploy­ment and any out­stand­ing pay­ments.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at SWRHA Kevon Ger­vais, but did not get a re­sponse up to press time.