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  • 1 year ago
The North West Regional Health Authority is conducting a permanency exercise, which will in part benefit nurses who were on contract. It is being done on a phased basis.


The T&T Registered Nurses Association, which is representing nurses in the matter before the Industrial Court, plans on addressing the issue in Tobago next.


Alicia Boucher has the details.
Transcript
00:00From November 13th onward, contract staff in all categories at the Northwest
00:05Regional Health Authority will begin receiving their permanent contracts.
00:09NWRHA Chief Executive Officer Retired Major Anthony Blake tells us such an
00:14exercise has not been undertaken since 2017 and the board felt it apt to do so
00:20now. We will actually start with nurses, one nursing personnel, that would be
00:25nurses, ENAs, registered mental health nurses also, that would start on
00:30Wednesday of this week, they would receive their letters, but the date of
00:34permanency would be as at November the 1st this year. From there we would move
00:39to ancillary staff, admin staff, like clerks, even our doctors would receive
00:44permanency letters moving forward. So Alicia, this is a good thing for the
00:50RHA, it will assist us in terms, as I said, in terms of our employee
00:54engagement strategy and our employee retention strategy. It is being done in
00:59three phases, offered firstly to employees who have served six or more
01:03years, followed by those with less tenure. As we're looking at balancing the
01:08funding for it, of course once employees become permanent we now have to make
01:12pension contributions for these employees and that would affect our
01:16recurrent budget in a significant way. The NWRHA says the majority of its staff
01:21representing 5,000 workers are permanent and a total of 1,075 employees are
01:28targeted for the permanency exercise, of which 675 will be encapsulated under
01:35phase one. It comes subsequent to several discussions between the NWRHA and the
01:39T&T Registered Nurses Association and both parties coming to an agreement
01:44before the Industrial Court concerning the employment status of nurses. When the
01:49matter came up for hearing last week, the court postponed it to allow the NWRHA
01:53time to address the problem. The issue was initially brought up three years ago
01:58between the TTRNA and the North Central Regional Health Authority, which the
02:03TTRNA won. President of the TTRNA Edie Stewart says the employment terms for
02:08nurses were untenable. So these nursing personnel were actually placed on
02:12successive, one-year, continuous, temporary employment arrangements. So the
02:20RHAs were actually floating their own policy over the years. They were supposed
02:25to bring in the individuals for six months, review them, once they're up to
02:30standard they were supposed to be made permanent. He also notes that less people
02:34were coming into the pension fund reducing contributions, inevitably
02:38impacting permanent workers as well. Blake reveals that the NWRHA has been
02:43making representation for additional funding at the Ministry of Finance
02:47through the Ministry of Health. We expect in due course, maybe in media review and
02:52so on, to have the Ministry of Finance look at us in a positive light in that
02:57regard. Meanwhile the TTRNA plans to take on the Tobago Regional Health Authority.
03:02Stewart says although their contract staff are receiving gratuity at the end
03:07of their employment, the TTRNA wants them to move over to permanency to
03:11address the pension payments. However, Stewart states that holding the TRHA to
03:17account has been difficult due to regular managerial changes. There seems
03:22to be something going on where almost without missing, the CEO is
03:28terminated and a new one is brought on. So we are writing to this new CEO and we
03:36hope to get a positive response in addition to a number of other issues. So
03:41that letter is going out this week to request a meeting with the new CEO.
03:46Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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