Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@gau­r­dian.co.tt

T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art be­lieves clin­i­cal staff should re­ceive a big­ger chunk of the ex gra­tia pay­ments be­ing made to health­care work­ers in the com­ing fis­cal year.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert act­ed on the Prime Min­is­ter’s promise to pro­vide a fi­nan­cial pay­ment to health­care work­ers for their work through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert an­nounced that $210 mil­lion will be set aside to make ex gra­tia pay­ments to over 20,000 health­care work­ers.

“It is a fit­ting trib­ute to their ex­em­plary and hero­ic per­for­mance that I have act­ed on the in­struc­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter...to al­lo­cate the sum of $210 mil­lion in the es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture for fis­cal 2023 as a spe­cial pay­ment to be dis­trib­uted to health work­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This will in­volve ex gra­tia pay­ments to over 20,000 health work­ers,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Stu­art, the as­so­ci­a­tion was grate­ful the Gov­ern­ment recog­nised their con­tri­bu­tions and is ea­ger to get fur­ther de­tails on how the mon­ey will be dis­trib­uted. In lieu of this, he has some sug­ges­tions. For one, he be­lieves the pay­ments should come as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We hope that that dis­burse­ment is met as soon as pos­si­ble. With all the in­creas­es we are hear­ing in the Bud­get, in­clud­ing gas prices, you could un­der­stand the ap­pre­hen­sion of all cit­i­zens-nurs­ing per­sons in­clud­ed- that every cent that one could eke out dur­ing this pe­ri­od would be def­i­nite­ly wel­comed, so it’s a good move,” he said.

He said this will al­so help to soothe the blow dealt to the pro­fes­sion on Re­pub­lic Day, when no ac­tive nurs­ing prac­ti­tion­er re­ceived a na­tion­al award.

Fur­ther­more, he said they be­lieve health­care work­ers who were phys­i­cal­ly re­quired to work dur­ing the pan­dem­ic should re­ceive a big­ger chunk of the pay­ment.

“We were ac­tu­al­ly there, un­like oth­er sec­tors with­in the health sec­tor. A lot of ad­min­is­tra­tive staff, they had the abil­i­ty to work from home, so they weren’t im­pact­ed as much as the clin­i­cal staff and even amongst the clin­i­cal staff, nurs­ing staff were there 24/7 with the pa­tients,” he said.

This is why he be­lieves nurs­ing per­son­nel in par­tic­u­lar should get more.

If dis­trib­uted even­ly among them, each work­er could re­ceive up to $10,500. He sug­gest­ed that the pay­ments at least mir­ror the work­ers’ salaries.

The health sec­tor was al­lo­cat­ed $6.892 bil­lion in the Bud­get.