Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers con­tin­ue to ex­press dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion, as the pos­si­bil­i­ty for health­care em­ploy­ees to be in­clud­ed among those re­ceiv­ing back­pay, or a por­tion of it, be­fore Christ­mas de­creas­es.

On Mon­day, Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe side-stepped di­rect re­spons­es on whether some work­ers, now protest­ing their ex­clu­sion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) ten per cent wage in­crease deal, will re­ceive back­pay be­fore Christ­mas.

Speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, a work­er said fad­ing hope has dealt a heavy blow to morale among health­care staff, many of whom were re­ly­ing on the ex­pect­ed pay­ment to man­age mount­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sures dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“We are dis­ap­point­ed and sad,” one work­er said, ques­tion­ing pub­lic com­men­tary that has crit­i­cised health­care work­ers af­ter a small-scale ac­tion led to de­lays at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The work­er not­ed that front­line staff were of­ten urged to re­main silent and con­tin­ue work­ing un­der dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, even when pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions failed to ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sate them.

“Why health­care pro­fes­sion­als, who are pay­ing PSA mem­bers, al­ways have to say we have to protest or down tools in or­der to get the Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion, why aren’t we treat­ed with the re­spect we de­serve. If this war should start and a bomb drops on Trinidad and To­ba­go, who will have to at­tend to these peo­ple who get dam­age.”

They fur­ther ac­knowl­edged that ex­pec­ta­tions for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were high, giv­en cam­paign promis­es to sup­port health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

They re­called state­ments made in Par­lia­ment em­pha­sis­ing “promise made, promise kept,” and said many RHA work­ers be­lieved those as­sur­ances ap­plied to all health­care staff.

“Our mes­sage is come clean with health­care pro­fes­sion­als. We un­der­stand the struc­ture, but there was no giv­en struc­ture when it is they called on health­care pro­fes­sion­als to hold the fort and go strong, so we are hurt and dis­ap­point­ed. One of her cam­paign promis­es was tak­ing care of health­care work­ers; she didn’t spec­i­fy po­lice, she didn’t spec­i­fy fire, she spec­i­fied health­care, that the PNM gov­ern­ment did not treat health­care pro­fes­sion­als how they need­ed to be treat­ed.”

An­oth­er work­er said the ex­clu­sion has left many em­ploy­ees de­mo­ti­vat­ed and emo­tion­al­ly ex­haust­ed, de­scrib­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where staff are “just go­ing through the mo­tions” rather than work­ing with their usu­al com­mit­ment and pas­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­di­vid­ual, poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion has wors­ened the sit­u­a­tion, with work­ers claim­ing they have re­ceived no clear guid­ance from man­age­ment or union rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the pay­ments.

Con­cerns were al­so raised about union rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with the work­ers ques­tion­ing how ef­fec­tive­ly their in­ter­ests are be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed.

One per­son ar­gued that health­care work­ers con­tin­ue to feel forced in­to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, such as go-slow mea­sures, sim­ply to gain the Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion.

“PSA ex­ec­u­tives hold po­si­tions on each RHA board. So how come on De­cem­ber 2, when you were ne­go­ti­at­ing, the same board you was sit­ting on, which is a RHA board, was not in your mind to com­pile your stuff for it one time?”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the de­vel­op­ment and the work­ers, in­clud­ing those in the health­care sec­tor, who will be omit­ted from the De­cem­ber back­pay pay­out.

“We are not sur­prised that is hap­pen­ing, and we wait very pa­tient­ly to hear what is go­ing to be the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse. Be­cause we are sure that it’s not on­ly go­ing to be the health­care work­ers.”

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing re­spons­es from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion leader Fe­l­isha Thomas about the con­cerns raised by the RHA work­ers.