RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Dai­ly-paid work­ers at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal walked off the job yes­ter­day morn­ing, cit­ing un­safe con­di­tions af­ter heavy rain­fall caused the ceil­ing of their stock­room to col­lapse.

No one was in­jured, but Ja­son Gor­don, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Di­vi­sion of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), said more than 75 work­ers have been dis­placed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Gor­don called on the new­ly in­stalled South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) board to in­ter­vene, say­ing the area where work­ers’ tools are stored was flood­ed and the roof fail­ure posed ad­di­tion­al health risks.

“The as­bestos ceil­ing is cause for con­cern, and safe­ty is at a high-risk lev­el right now. It seems like man­age­ment has no in­ten­tion of fix­ing any­thing,” Gor­don said.

Al­though the union has not yet met with SWRHA chair­man Anil Go­sine, Gor­don said the union raised con­cerns with chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Bri­an Ar­mour sev­er­al months ago. While some ju­nior of­fi­cers have spo­ken with union mem­bers on-site, he claimed no clear plan has been com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

Gor­don said the union flagged prob­lems with the fa­cil­i­ty more than a year ago, with dis­cus­sions on­go­ing for over six months. He rec­om­mend­ed tem­po­rary hous­ing for the work­ers, but those sug­ges­tions were nev­er im­ple­ment­ed.

The af­fect­ed staff in­clude work­ers from the grounds, en­vi­ron­men­tal, elec­tri­cal, and plumb­ing de­part­ments.

NUGFW branch pres­i­dent and hos­pi­tal shop stew­ard Roger Roach said the col­lapse has left work­ers un­able to ac­cess their tools, change room, or bath­room fa­cil­i­ties.

“The whole area flood­ed. We can­not ac­cess the change room or the bath­room. There are al­so on­go­ing leaks,” Roach said.

He added that some work­ers have been stay­ing at the hos­pi­tal’s hos­tel, which was ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed for a three-month stay but has been oc­cu­pied for six years de­spite be­ing in a di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion.

NUGFW Labour Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Ani­ka Rivers con­firmed the union has not yet con­tact­ed Go­sine or Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe.

“We are wait­ing to meet with the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer. In the past, we wrote to the CEO re­quest­ing a meet­ing with­in sev­en work­ing days. To date, no one from the RHA has re­spond­ed,” Rivers said, warn­ing that if is­sues re­main un­re­solved, both staff and pa­tients would be af­fect­ed.

Dr Bo­doe has since said he will in­ves­ti­gate the work­ers’ com­plaints.

In re­sponse to the shut­down, the SWRHA said it is aware of an ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ter brought to its at­ten­tion via cor­re­spon­dence on Ju­ly 28.

“The is­sue raised… refers to the ear­marked Au­gust 31 com­ple­tion date for re­pairs to the orig­i­nal work lo­ca­tion and the re­turn of af­fect­ed staff,” the state­ment read.

The Au­thor­i­ty said it rec­om­mend­ed tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion be­tween Ju­ly 26 and 27 to fa­cil­i­tate roof re­pairs and main­te­nance “with no com­pro­mise to the health, safe­ty, and well-be­ing of staff.” It added that the area where the ceil­ing col­lapsed was not as­signed for oc­cu­pan­cy and had been pro­hib­it­ed for ac­cess.

SWRHA said it will con­tin­ue to meet with the union to ad­dress con­cerns.