Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) is re­call­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters is­sued to dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete said the union was tak­ing steps to pro­tect the work­ers’ in­ter­ests and would meet with the SWRHA’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer on Fri­day to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

“I urge all af­fect­ed work­ers to re­main calm, re­port for du­ty as nor­mal, and take re­as­sur­ance from the fact that your Union is ac­tive­ly en­gaged in ad­dress­ing this mat­ter,” Streete said.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that 124 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers had been told their tem­po­rary ca­su­al em­ploy­ment would end on Oc­to­ber 16.

How­ev­er, Oropouche East MP and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­nied the re­port in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young raised the is­sue.

“We are in­formed that this is false. That is false,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal said a re­view by the SWRHA’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and hu­man re­sources de­part­ments had led to the de­ci­sion, which he said was based on val­ue for mon­ey and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

“A re­view was done by the IR de­part­ment and HR and the de­ci­sion was tak­en in keep­ing with val­ue for mon­ey and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy,” he said.

He al­so al­leged that some of the af­fect­ed work­ers had been in­car­cer­at­ed while con­tin­u­ing to re­ceive pay, while oth­ers had crim­i­nal records.

“Some of the per­sons, al­though be­ing paid at that en­ter­prise, had been in­car­cer­at­ed. They were in jail re­ceiv­ing pay,” Mooni­lal said. “Some have crim­i­nal records and still be­ing paid.”

Streete said the union need­ed to es­tab­lish the facts and called for di­a­logue among the stake­hold­ers.

“The liveli­hoods of work­ers and their fam­i­lies are at stake, and we are de­ter­mined to en­sure that their con­cerns are firm­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the high­est lev­el,” Streete said.

He added, “Our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to stand with our mem­bers, de­fend their in­ter­ests and pur­sue mean­ing­ful an­swers where their em­ploy­ment se­cu­ri­ty is threat­ened.”

The orig­i­nal re­port came af­ter NUGFW South­ern Di­vi­sion ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent Ja­son Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia that work­ers had re­port­ed for du­ty on Fri­day but were in­formed that their ser­vices were no longer re­quired.

Gor­don said the work­ers re­ceived let­ters from the SWRHA’s Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment ad­vis­ing that their tem­po­rary ca­su­al em­ploy­ment would end on Oc­to­ber 16.

He said the union had not been con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion was made.