Vol­un­teer staff at mass vac­ci­na­tion sites with­in the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) have not been paid their stipend as promised by the Min­istry of Health some six months ago. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, one den­tist who has been vol­un­teer­ing since May said their pleas are falling on deaf ears. 

"We feel used by the Min­istry. We feel un­der­val­ued and we don't re­al­ly feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed at all. Es­pe­cial­ly since there were days when we were do­ing num­bers that would shame any oth­er health cen­tre that would have been giv­ing vac­cines," the vol­un­teer said. 

How­ev­er, the non­pay­ment comes af­ter the min­istry re­neged to pay them $500 per day and is now on­ly of­fer­ing $300. The den­tist said while there were no writ­ten con­tracts stip­u­lat­ing the $500 per eight-hour day pay­ment, it was told ver­bal­ly to them. 

"We were all told the stipend would be $500 a day," the vol­un­teer said.

In ad­di­tion, the vol­un­teers were sign­ing a timesheet, which Guardian Me­dia laid eyes on, that in­di­cat­ed the re­mu­ner­a­tion fig­ure. How­ev­er, the vol­un­teer said this was changed in the mid­dle of Ju­ly when a new timesheet was in­sti­tut­ed, which Guardian Me­dia al­so saw.

The new timesheet, al­so bear­ing the Min­istry of Health lo­go, did not have the re­mu­ner­a­tion fig­ure on it. 

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained an email which was sent from the min­istry to a site su­per­vi­sor in­form­ing of "the ap­proved re­mit­tance of $300 per day for vol­un­teers" with the at­tached new timesheet. 

The vol­un­teer said a let­ter was sent to the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh on the mat­ter and was re­ceived by his sec­re­tary. 

"We have not re­ceived any re­sponse to date," the vol­un­teer said. 

At the $500 dai­ly rate, the vol­un­teer said they are per­son­al­ly owed around $30,000. At the $300 rate, the vol­un­teer said they would be owed around $19,000. 

Frus­trat­ed with the non­pay­ment of the stipend, the vol­un­teer said oth­ers have stopped show­ing up at the site to vac­ci­nate peo­ple. 

"That not on­ly in­creas­es the work­load on the re­main­ing vol­un­teers but it al­so slows things down a lot. It is quite stress­ful on a dai­ly ba­sis to go there and have to vac­ci­nate the same num­ber of peo­ple with lim­it­ed amount of vol­un­teers," the per­son said. 

Guardian Me­dia asked Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh about the non­pay­ment of the stipend at Wednes­day's vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence. How­ev­er, he said he was not aware of the mat­ter and will have to look in­to it once the in­for­ma­tion was for­ward­ed to him. Guardian Me­dia for­ward­ed the req­ui­site in­for­ma­tion to the Min­is­ter short­ly af­ter. Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the Min­is­ter of Health yes­ter­day on the mat­ter, how­ev­er, no re­sponse was pro­vid­ed up to press time. 

We al­so reached out to NCRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Davlin Thomas. How­ev­er, calls and mes­sages went unan­swered.