Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the Gov­ern­ment has not­ed the planned protest by nurs­ing staff over wage is­sues, but he is urg­ing them not to dis­rupt pa­tient care and es­sen­tial ser­vices.

How­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) says it has no knowl­edge of any planned day of “rest and re­flec­tion” by nurs­ing per­son­nel and finds it “strange” that the me­dia re­lease sin­gled out nurs­es, when it is oth­er cat­e­gories of health­care work­ers who have threat­ened to “down tools.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en note of the planned ‘day of rest and re­flec­tion’ by nurs­ing per­son­nel over out­stand­ing wage set­tle­ments. While we re­spect the right to protest, we urge that pa­tient care and es­sen­tial ser­vices be pro­tect­ed at all times.”

The min­is­ter then at­tempt­ed to ex­plain why re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers did not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit from the De­cem­ber 2 “10 per cent” agree­ment be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

“Re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) are pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies cre­at­ed un­der their own Act and are not part of the core pub­lic ser­vice gov­erned by the Civ­il Ser­vice Act. When RHAs were first op­er­a­tionalised, staff who trans­ferred from the Civ­il Ser­vice and statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties were guar­an­teed that, at the point of trans­fer, they would not be placed on less favourable terms. That was a one-time safe­guard, not an open-end­ed guar­an­tee that every fu­ture Civ­il Ser­vice wage in­crease would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low them in­to the RHAs.”

He added that on­ly pub­lic of­fi­cers still gov­erned by the Civ­il Ser­vice Act will re­ceive the re­vised terms from the CPO and PSA agree­ment. Tan­coo said ex­tend­ing those terms to all RHA staff would be out­side the Gov­ern­ment’s le­gal au­thor­i­ty, since RHAs are the ac­tu­al em­ploy­ers.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter then ex­plained that the TTNA was for­mal­ly recog­nised in Jan­u­ary 2025 as the bar­gain­ing union for cer­tain nurs­es at the East­ern RHA. There­fore, wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for RHA work­ers must oc­cur be­tween each RHA and its recog­nised union un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act.

Min­is­ter Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment sup­ports col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and is open to fair, af­ford­able wage in­creas­es through law­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions. He al­so urged all recog­nised RHA unions to sub­mit for­mal wage pro­pos­als to be­gin that process.

Tan­coo added that since tak­ing of­fice sev­en months ago, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion has start­ed re­solv­ing over­due wage mat­ters, and he asked health­care work­ers to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing vi­tal care as dis­cus­sions move for­ward.

But TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art told Guardian Me­dia the union has no in­for­ma­tion on a planned day of rest and re­flec­tion by nurs­ing per­son­nel.

“It’s re­al­ly strange that he would have fo­cused on nurs­ing, and it re­al­ly would leave the pub­lic to think that it is nurs­ing per­son­nel alone that is prob­a­bly mak­ing some of these state­ments in the pub­lic do­main and on so­cial me­dia, and it is not so.”

When Guardian Me­dia ini­tial­ly re­port­ed that sev­er­al health­care work­ers were con­sid­er­ing “down­ing tools” due to back­pay is­sues, we were told by at least one RHA that the cat­e­gories of work­ers range from phar­ma­cists, cler­i­cal staff, at­ten­dants and phle­botomists, all rep­re­sent­ed by the PSA.

Stu­art added, “So, I would be cu­ri­ous why he has not called any oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­er or why he has not called any oth­er union. It could be that TTNNA is prob­a­bly the most vo­cal, so he may have mis­in­ter­pret­ed that it is the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion push­ing that agen­da. And we would want to as­sure the min­is­ter it’s not the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion push­ing that agen­da. He may have to look else­where.”

Stu­art said his mem­bers are very aware of the process that the min­is­ter high­light­ed in his state­ment. He said the TTNNA would, there­fore, not have called on nurs­es to take any ac­tion be­cause it is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“The per­cep­tion of the re­lease by the Min­istry of Fi­nance may give the per­sons in the pub­lic do­main an im­pres­sion that it is nurs­ing per­son­nel who are go­ing to en­gage in rest and re­flec­tion, and we are a lit­tle tak­en aback at the con­tents of the re­lease,” Stu­art said.