Chester Sam­bra­no

The T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) is ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er a $1 mil­lion pay­out in the event any nurse los­es their life dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The re­quest comes in the wake of the death of head nurse Mer­lene Placide at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal last week. While Placide’s death was not COVID-re­lat­ed, the anx­i­ety of the fra­ter­ni­ty has once again been height­ened af­ter what nurs­es claimed was the poor re­sponse to the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty fol­low­ing her death.

Placide vol­un­teered her ser­vices for COVID du­ty and re­port­ed­ly set up the virus unit at Cau­ra. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing her death, the NCRHA on­ly sent a fruit bas­ket and a wreath to her fam­i­ly, as per pol­i­cy with RHA’s. This prompt­ed calls for haz­ard pay, death ben­e­fits and health in­sur­ance nurs­es now on the COVID front­line.

In a 10-page let­ter Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh on Mon­day (April 27), the TTR­NA, which is head­ed by Idi Stu­art, pro­posed that a $1 mil­lion dis­burse­ment be paid to the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of nurs­es “in the un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance that he or she dies while on du­ty or in route to or from du­ty as a di­rect re­sult of work.” It said the cost to the Gov­ern­ment is to be de­ter­mined.

The TTR­NA al­so asked for tiered Haz­ard al­lowance for nurs­es and mid­wives work­ing in haz­ardous sit­u­a­tions. It said this will cost Gov­ern­ment $9,182, 520 per year.

The third re­quest is a pro­pos­al for a con­trib­u­to­ry and manda­to­ry Health In­sur­ance Ben­e­fit at $500,000 over a three-year pe­ri­od to be ad­min­is­tered through the TTR­NA’s ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy with TATIL. The ex­pect­ed cost per year to the Gov­ern­ment, as worked out by the TTR­NA, is $12,600.

At the COVID-19 news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties were gear­ing up to ap­proach the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to dis­cuss med­ical cov­er­age for the health­care providers. He said he dis­cussed the mat­ter with the CEOs of all the RHAs yes­ter­day and was told that all RHAs “have some sort of in­sur­ance for health­care work­ers; health­care work­ers in gen­er­al, not a par­tic­u­lar group.”

How­ev­er, notwith­stand­ing this, he said the RHAs will be seek­ing to do more for the front­line work­ers.

“I am told they are look­ing to go to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer to see what oth­er ad­di­tion­al cov­er­age can be of­fered but this has to be done us­ing the process avail­able with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer,” Deyals­ingh said.

In re­sponse to this, Stu­art said his as­so­ci­a­tion was pleased with the an­nounce­ment.

“How­ev­er, we con­tin­ue to be con­fused with the re­peat­ed state­ments made by of­fi­cials that nurs­es al­ready re­ceive some mea­sure of health in­sur­ance. For the record, nurs­es do not re­ceive any form of health in­sur­ance or any oth­er ben­e­fit from the RHAs,” he said.

Stu­art said the TTR­NA is mind­ful Deyals­ingh al­so said the Cab­i­net has al­ready ap­proved sig­nif­i­cant sums to the COVID re­sponse to be used by the RHAs but said he does not en­vi­sion any prob­lems in ac­cess­ing more if need­ed.

“There­fore, the as­so­ci­a­tion and its mem­bers, while thank­ful, are a bit dis­ap­point­ed that the Gov­ern­ment did not see it fit to be proac­tive and pro­vide these ben­e­fits for staff who are di­rect­ly work­ing with sus­pect­ed and pos­i­tive pa­tients, and it took the death of a nurse and the ag­i­ta­tion of TTR­NA to jolt the min­istry in­to ac­tion,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh re­mind­ed the coun­try that Cab­i­net ap­proved $157 mil­lion to deal with COVID-19 and that his min­istry has got every­thing it asked for.

“So I see no fi­nan­cial chal­lenges mov­ing for­ward deal­ing with COVID,” he said.

At the brief­ing, Deyals­ingh al­so said the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) is now op­er­a­tional and four health care work­ers are cur­rent­ly be­ing housed there, while 12 more are ex­pect­ed next week. He said the fa­cil­i­ty will be used to quar­an­tine med­ical pro­fes­sion­als af­ter they deal with COVID pa­tients.

On Mon­day, po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived word that they will now be cov­ered by COVID-19 in­sur­ance with an agree­ment be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Guardian Group.

Those cov­ered un­der the spe­cialised Guardian Life plan will be en­ti­tled to $10,000 if they con­tract the virus. Should they die as a re­sult of COVID-19, their de­pen­dants will re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $25,000. The cov­er­age pe­ri­od is 12 months but will be sub­ject to re­view de­pend­ing on how the COVID-19 is­sue de­vel­ops.