A hand­ful of health­care work­ers turned up for last night’s can­dle­light vig­il as part of their on­go­ing wage dis­pute with the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry of Health.

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, health­care work­ers were asked to show sol­i­dar­i­ty for one hour be­tween 7 pm and 8 pm at all re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties.

A fly­er read: “ALL RHA’S CAN­DLE LIGHT VIG­IL As we await a re­sponse from the pow­ers that be. Let’s come out on Thurs­day 16th, April at 7pm with our Can­dles for one (1) hour.”

Those at­tend­ing were asked to pray for strength for one an­oth­er “through this jour­ney.” The time was al­so meant to be used to re­flect on their com­rades who died and fam­i­lies they left be­hind.

​“Let’s ap­pre­ci­ate the pro­fes­sion that we choose. But most of all let’s send a mes­sage that we are HERE,” the post read.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed a hand­ful of RHA facil­ties, how­ev­er, the turnout was ei­ther poor or non-ex­is­tent.

No one showed up at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and St James Med­ical Com­plex. Nine peo­ple showed up dur­ing the time Guardian Me­dia was at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The work­ers at the PoS­GH ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to vis­it the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal, as they did not want to be in­ter­viewed or pho­tographed.

At St Ann’s, two peo­ple showed up while Guardian Me­dia was there.

While calls to T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art went unan­swered, oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers said the vig­il was not part of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s plans.

Last week, Stu­art met with his ex­ec­u­tive a day af­ter lead­ing a mas­sive ral­ly through Port- of-Spain de­mand­ing a time­line on wage ne­go­ti­a­tion set­tle­ments. He said then that the re­sponse by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe af­ter the ral­ly, cin wuich he claimed there was no cri­sis at the health fa­cil­i­ties, was dis­re­spect­ful to work­ers and would meet with his mem­bers on Sat­ur­day to dis­cuss the TTNNA’S 15-point plan to ad­dress the is­sues fac­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Last week’s ac­tion was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a de­ci­sion by the NCRHA to re­duce nurs­es’ over­time hourly rates, known as pool, from $75 hourly to $60 hourly. Stu­art, dur­ing the protest, called on health­care work­ers to re­ject the new rates and to de­mand they be paid the time and a half, dou­ble time and triple time of­fered to all oth­er class­es of work­ers.