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A Nurse’s Plight
Dear Editor,
As I type you this letter my eyes are very teary to see my husband unable to provide for his family despite the change we both voted for. My husband is a Nursing Assistant and was in the process of updating his professional status to Registered Nurse when he received a letter stating if he continues the course he will be paid a stipend for the next three years. The stipend is sixteen thousand dollars a month. If he decides to drop the course he has to repay the government for the months he was paid his salary which is a total of five months.
Let be back up a bit, he did the Professional Nursing Course and kept failing one particular paper of which the last time he did a re-sit, the paper had a typographical error. After failing again he was devastated since the only chance was to do the entire course again, which he refused to do. After much encouragement by myself, family and close friends he applied for the course again this year.
Now this is my problem, at the interview the matter of salary was never discussed and he was not briefed on some memorandum which stated that persons who wished to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree or Post Graduate qualifications and have been employed in the Public Service for not less than a period of five continuous years of pensionable service or more could be granted study leave with pay and those less than five study leave without pay. Now a couple of things I have been questioning: my husband is already serving in the capacity of nursing assistant and should be paid for that. Secondly he’s on contract at the hospital he is stationed at and not a part of Public Health staff so he does not fall under the category of being a pensionable worker so in my mind this does not apply to him. Thirdly he is not pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree or any Post graduate upgrades he simply wants to complete his Professional Nursing Certificate.
My husband is not a lazy individual rather he is very ambitious and a very good nurse, he loves what he does. He went to several meetings with persons in office and authority who he thought could give him some assistance including our Honourable Minister of State, Mr. Harmon twice but no one is doing anything. The government is saying young people should get up and be employed, upgrade, develop themselves, these are things he is trying to do while supporting his family. We are in the process of building our home. The work has already started, we have bills to pay, our son is now starting school, we have to eat, and we have to survive. How can you corner a man to a wall like that?
It hurts to see your loved ones suffer. Now the only options he has is to do the course with sixteen thousand dollars a month. What on earth can that do? Nothing! Or work the five months without salary? Is that fair? Is that the change we both voted for? Is that the type of people we have governing our nation who don’t care about the small man, this is a young man who is trying to make something of himself and live up to the commitments of his family and the government wants to destroy that. It is a shame, a real shame.
A concerned wife
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