Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art is warn­ing of fur­ther dis­rup­tion across the coun­try’s health­care sys­tem fol­low­ing last Fri­day’s large-scale protest in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Stu­art said the as­so­ci­a­tion was “over­whelmed” by the turnout, es­ti­mat­ing that more than 2,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the march, which in­clud­ed not on­ly nurs­es and mid­wives but a wide cross-sec­tion of health­care work­ers. He said the demon­stra­tion high­light­ed grow­ing frus­tra­tion across the sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the lack of clar­i­ty from the Gov­ern­ment on salary in­creas­es.

“All health­care work­ers are re­al­ly ag­griev­ed at the cur­rent sta­tus quo, the cur­rent lim­bo that the Gov­ern­ment is not ar­tic­u­lat­ing in any man­ner when health­care work­ers would re­ceive a salary in­crease,” Stu­art said, adding that con­tin­ued si­lence from Lack­ram Bo­doe, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has “in­fu­ri­at­ed” work­ers.

Stu­art al­so chal­lenged state­ments made by the Health Min­is­ter in Par­lia­ment, where Bo­doe re­port­ed­ly de­nied that there was any im­passe be­tween nurs­es and the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

“I’m re­al­ly hop­ing some­one could ask him the ques­tion that health­care work­ers re­al­ly want an­swered—when would they re­ceive a salary in­crease?” Stu­art said, warn­ing that the sit­u­a­tion is al­ready af­fect­ing pa­tient care.

While the TTNNA has at­tempt­ed to lim­it dis­rup­tion by stag­ing protests dur­ing lunch hours, Stu­art ad­mit­ted that last Fri­day’s ac­tion still im­pact­ed ser­vices, in­clud­ing surg­eries and oth­er crit­i­cal op­er­a­tions.

“A num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions, a num­ber of ser­vices were neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed. And we re­al­ly do em­pathise with the pa­tients who suf­fered,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia is still await­ing re­spons­es from the chair­men of the NCRHA, NWRHA, SWRHA and ER­HA as to whether or not there were any dis­rup­tions to op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing Fri­day’s demon­stra­tion.

Mean­while, Stu­art cau­tioned that more se­vere ac­tion may be im­mi­nent.

He ex­plained that while the as­so­ci­a­tion in­tends to op­er­ate with­in le­gal bound­aries, oth­er emerg­ing groups with­in the health­care sec­tor may not be as re­strained.

“There are oth­er sub­groups plan­ning ac­tiv­i­ties out­side of the re­mit and con­trol of the as­so­ci­a­tion, from what we are hear­ing, it’s go­ing to cause a lot of dis­rup­tion in the health­care sys­tem,” he said.

Stu­art urged the Gov­ern­ment to act swift­ly to de-es­ca­late ten­sions.

Mean­while, Stu­art al­so dis­missed a re­cent re­port sub­mit­ted to the Prime Min­is­ter by NCRHA chair­man Tim Gopeesingh, which out­lined the board’s per­for­mance and claimed sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial sav­ings and an­ti-cor­rup­tion mea­sures.

“A politi­cian writ­ing to his leader is re­al­ly of no val­ue; it’s not a fac­tu­al doc­u­ment,” Stu­art said.

He ar­gued that re­port­ed sav­ings could be at­trib­uted to un­der­in­vest­ment in pa­tient care.

Stu­art al­so re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and ir­reg­u­lar prac­tices in­volv­ing nurs­ing staff, not­ing that no such cas­es have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed by au­thor­i­ties.

Look­ing ahead, the TTNNA is set to meet with its mem­ber­ship this week­end to dis­cuss a pro­posed ten-point ac­tion plan de­vel­oped dur­ing an emer­gency ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing.

Stu­art said any de­ci­sions tak­en will be law­ful, but warned they are like­ly to have a wide­spread im­pact.