JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to ur­gent­ly ad­dress what they de­scribe as a crit­i­cal short­age of con­sum­ables need­ed for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the hos­pi­tal.

Dur­ing a lunchtime protest out­side the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, work­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kester Thomas, said they have no in­ten­tion of with­draw­ing their labour but can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly with­out es­sen­tial sup­plies.

“There are many items miss­ing—lab sponges, suc­tion tub­ing, blue sur­gi­cal pa­per. These are es­sen­tial for op­er­a­tions, and right now those items are at ze­ro,” Thomas said.

“These are clin­i­cal stores that must be pro­cured to en­sure the hos­pi­tal runs prop­er­ly. In com­mer­cial stores, food items are al­so lack­ing, along with ba­sic sup­plies like nee­dles and sy­ringes. These things are at crit­i­cal­ly low lev­els, and staff are say­ing enough is enough. You can­not work with the bare min­i­mum.”

Thomas warned that di­etary re­quire­ments for pa­tients could al­so be com­pro­mised be­cause of the short­ages.

“This is not a per­son­al at­tack on any­one,” he said.

“We don’t own the hos­pi­tal. All of us have par­ents and fam­i­ly mem­bers who will need hos­pi­tal care at some point. The au­thor­i­ties need to get their act to­geth­er and fix this ur­gent­ly. Pa­tients on spe­cif­ic di­ets are sup­posed to re­ceive cer­tain foods—beans, sta­ples, and so on—but when the items are not in the kitchen, how can those di­ets be prop­er­ly served?”

He as­sured that work­ers would not be pe­nalised for rais­ing their con­cerns and not­ed that em­ploy­ees are en­ti­tled to a ten per cent wage in­crease in line with oth­er gov­ern­ment work­ers.

One pro­test­er, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said he was frus­trat­ed af­ter years of work­ing in the stores de­part­ment with­out ad­e­quate pro­tec­tive gear and es­sen­tial equip­ment. He said the is­sue had been build­ing for years and had now reached a break­ing point.

Asked why work­ers had not spo­ken out soon­er, he said fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion had kept many silent.

“We’re work­ers, and peo­ple are afraid—afraid of job loss, sus­pen­sions, things like that,” he said.

“We com­plied and com­plained qui­et­ly, but now it’s over­bear­ing. There’s noth­ing wrong with telling the truth about what’s hap­pen­ing in the sys­tem.”

In re­sponse, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the protest stemmed from his ef­forts to ad­dress al­leged cor­rup­tion with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

“Wher­ev­er Tim Gopeesingh goes, there seems to be protest,” he said.

“That is be­cause I in­sist on strict ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and dili­gence. As I stat­ed at a press con­fer­ence, we un­cov­ered col­lu­sion in­volv­ing sup­pli­ers and in­di­vid­u­als with­in hos­pi­tal stores.”

Gopeesingh said these ac­tions have re­sult­ed in sav­ings of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $150 mil­lion for the NCRHA through im­proved gov­er­nance and the elim­i­na­tion of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment. He said he was there­fore not sur­prised by the protest.

Re­gard­ing wage con­cerns, Gopeesingh said the mat­ter is be­ing han­dled by the Min­istry of Health.