Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj

@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says he will ini­ti­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to com­plaints at the Med­ical Records De­part­ment at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter staff mem­bers raised al­le­ga­tions of un­safe work­ing con­di­tions, nepo­tism, and vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Staff Side, Clint Walk­er, said em­ploy­ees were be­ing forced to work un­der ex­treme pres­sure with­out ad­e­quate sup­port.

He said staff were be­ing as­signed to ar­eas with­out suf­fi­cient man­pow­er.

“Work­ers who raise con­cerns are be­ing pun­ished with re­as­sign­ments or tar­get­ed by man­age­ment,” Walk­er said.

Those who ques­tion new as­sign­ments have faced vic­tim­i­sa­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion, he added. Walk­er said com­plaints made to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions de­part­ment in the past were passed on to man­agers, re­sult­ing in fur­ther back­lash.

A source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty claimed staff had been de­nied per­for­mance ap­praisals, with some al­leg­ing that eval­u­a­tions were be­ing al­tered with­out trans­paren­cy.

Video footage ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia showed med­ical records stored on the floors, pos­ing safe­ty haz­ards.

Some em­ploy­ees said their work­ing hours were changed with­out sys­tems to sup­port prop­er sign-in pro­ce­dures. They added that staff were not al­lowed to speak freely or ask ques­tions about in­struc­tions passed down from man­age­ment.

“Work­ers are be­ing treat­ed like slaves. Some of them are be­ing made to per­form mul­ti­ple jobs in a sin­gle shift. The fe­male staff are han­dling phys­i­cal­ly de­mand­ing tasks in un­safe con­di­tions be­cause there is a lack of prop­er fil­ing sys­tems and over­crowd­ed stor­age ar­eas,” the source added.

One area was re­port­ed­ly so cramped that em­ploy­ees were un­able to safe­ly use lad­ders to re­trieve files.

“There are con­cerns that pa­tient records are scat­tered across var­i­ous lo­ca­tions, re­sult­ing in in­com­plete doc­u­men­ta­tion. Work­ers al­so raised is­sues with the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the use of trac­er cards, which help track the move­ment of files, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to lo­cate doc­u­ments when need­ed,” the source said.

“The de­part­ment has many un­filled po­si­tions, leav­ing cur­rent staff to car­ry dou­ble and triple work­loads. There were al­so al­le­ga­tions that staff are be­ing asked to work on pub­lic hol­i­days with­out prop­er jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, while oth­ers re­ceive pref­er­en­tial treat­ment,” the source re­vealed.

Em­ploy­ees said they were phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly over­whelmed, with some seek­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port, while oth­ers have re­signed or turned down pro­mo­tions to es­cape what they de­scribe as a tox­ic en­vi­ron­ment. The source said one em­ploy­ee, who was re­cent­ly di­ag­nosed with a ter­mi­nal ill­ness, re­port­ed­ly con­tin­ued to work un­til his death, out of fear that he would lose favour with man­age­ment. Staff said his pass­ing was nev­er of­fi­cial­ly ac­knowl­edged by lead­er­ship.

The source al­so said staff meet­ings were rare and, when held, did not al­low for ques­tions or staff in­put. They are now call­ing for im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion, warn­ing that if their con­cerns re­main un­ad­dressed, they will stage protest ac­tion.

When con­tact­ed via What­sApp, Dr Bo­doe said, “This mat­ter will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and the re­port for­ward­ed to the in­com­ing SWRHA Board for their ac­tion.”