RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A young moth­er fears she may soon be un­able to af­ford milk for her child, af­ter she and 123 oth­er dai­ly-paid work­ers were laid off by the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA).

Car­la Black­man, a tum­bler op­er­a­tor at the au­thor­i­ty, said she was hurt and de­mo­ti­vat­ed af­ter re­ceiv­ing a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 15 in­form­ing her that her ser­vices were no longer re­quired.

Black­man said her son, who was born on Jan­u­ary 1, was the first child to re­ceive an elec­tron­ic birth cer­tifi­cate.

She re­called be­ing con­grat­u­lat­ed by min­is­ters, who had de­scribed her son as a fu­ture child of the SWRHA.

How­ev­er, less than ten months lat­er, she is un­cer­tain about how she will pro­vide for her three chil­dren.

She said los­ing her job while still re­cov­er­ing af­ter child­birth had tak­en an emo­tion­al toll, and ap­pealed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­ter­vene.

“You’re a moth­er. Act as a moth­er,” she said.

Black­man was among work­ers who gath­ered at the SWRHA seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about their ter­mi­na­tion let­ters and whether the de­ci­sion had been re­versed.

The work­ers were es­cort­ed off the com­pound by se­cu­ri­ty while wait­ing to meet chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr She­vanand Gopeesingh.

Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) South­ern Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Ja­son Gor­don said the union had been seek­ing an­swers af­ter work­ers were told not to re­turn to du­ty at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions.

Gor­don said the union’s pres­i­dent gen­er­al, Christo­pher Streete, had been as­sured by the CEO that the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters would be re­scind­ed. How­ev­er, work­ers who re­port­ed for du­ty yes­ter­day were told the let­ters re­mained in ef­fect.

Gor­don said the union had not re­ceived an of­fi­cial ex­pla­na­tion from the au­thor­i­ty and de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as dis­tress­ing for work­ers who did not know how they would sup­port their fam­i­lies.

He re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the dai­ly-paid work­ers were un­pro­duc­tive, say­ing the union be­lieved they were be­ing pushed out to make way for con­tract­ed work­ers per­form­ing sim­i­lar du­ties.

Gor­don said con­tract­ed work­ers were al­ready op­er­at­ing in the laun­dry along­side dai­ly-paid em­ploy­ees, which he de­scribed as a breach of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

NUGFW Branch chair­man Roger Roach said the loss of work­ers was al­ready af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions in sev­er­al ar­eas, where staff short­ages had made it dif­fi­cult to meet nor­mal pro­duc­tion tar­gets.

He said the au­thor­i­ty had been short-staffed for years and that re­mov­ing work­ers would wors­en the sit­u­a­tion.

Out­go­ing SWRHA chair­man Anil Go­sine said he was un­aware that work­ers had been ter­mi­nat­ed.

Go­sine said un­der his tenure the board had re­viewed con­tracts giv­en un­der the PNM and with­drawn sev­er­al that lacked prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, but stressed that the work­ers’ mat­ter was in­de­pen­dent of his res­ig­na­tion.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe was con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day but did not give a re­sponse up to press time.