Jagdeo criticizes coalition for rejecting health worker’s requests for allowances

Oct 04, 2020 News

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– but fails to commit to same

Kaieteur News –  Vice President (VP), Bharrat Jagdeo, has criticized the former APNU+AFC regime for repeatedly rejecting public health workers’ requests for risk allowances. Jagdeo’s utterances would appear as hypocritical, however, as the PPP/C refuses to commit to those same request.

Jagdeo’s comment follows hundreds of nurses and other frontline workers from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH) and the Linden Hospital Complex (LHC) staged protests for better salaries, working conditions and risk allowances, over the past two weeks.
Carrying placards and chanting ‘No increase and allowance; no work period’, and ‘We demand risk allowances’, the frontline workers believe that their requests are “more than reasonable”.
This is compounded when one considers that these workers are risking their lives to protect themselves and citizens from the COVID-19 virus—which has infected more than 3,000 Guyanese and has taken the lives of 86.
Last week, the former Minister of Public Service, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, had claimed that the coalition was “actively considering” with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) a substantial $100,000 allowance request from the former Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) for healthcare workers.
Sarabo-Halley claimed, however, that after the PPP/C assumed office in August the proposal was disregarded.
The VP rebutted these claims on Friday during an engagement with the press, as he revealed that former Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, had repeatedly refused the health workers’ requests for improved allowances.

In fact, Jagdeo articulated to the press that: “When we checked the records, several times the request went into the ministry and they denied it… Over the last several years, the request went in for the allowances for the health workers and they denied it.”
Jagdeo’s statements were buttressed by those of the current Public Service Minister, Sonia Parag, who told the National Communications Network (NCN) last week that: “For several months now, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and the Ministry of Health were making several requests through the Department of Public Service to the Ministry of Finance for increases in allowances. The then Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan flatly refused and rejected those requests.”
Jordan sought to respond to Minister Parag, as he penned in a letter yesterday that her utterances were “misguided” and “misinformed”.
In fact in his letter, Jordan asserted that it was he who developed the idea for the payment of a COVID-19 risk allowance (CRA).
“Yes, you heard correctly,” he claimed. “It was my idea. It arose out of an earnest conversation I had with a nurse of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).”
Jordan wrote that on April 5, 2020 he contacted MoPH, via WhatsApp, outlining a series of issues raised by health workers, and urged that the matters be addressed quickly.
“I offered the Ministry of Finance’s help to prevent a crisis from developing, including the payment of a risk allowance to frontline workers,” he said, while noting that he is able to include that quotation since he is still in receipt of the WhatsApp communication.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Health (PS, MPH) and the Director, Office of the Budget (DOB) were charged with the responsibility of putting a package together, Jordan said.
He maintained an interest in ensuring that the exercise would be concluded speedily, which obviously, did not occur.
He said that critical information was not provided in a timely manner, as MoPH staffers seemed “preoccupied” with getting the contentious COVID-19 hospital completed, among other matters.
He added, however, where information was provided, it was partial and, in some cases, useless to the exercise at hand.
For example, an initial list of those to benefit that was submitted by PS, MPH excluded those in the 10 regions and GPHC; subsequent lists that were submitted by the PS, MoPH were found to be defective for a number of reasons; no clear indication of who is a frontline worker was given; recommended monthly payments, retroactive to March 2020, ranged from $120,000 to $60,000. However, no information was provided by MoPH as to how these figures were arrived at.
Further, the former minister claimed that no information was provided as to the number of persons to be paid in each category; and the number of persons in receipt of risk allowance who will need a ‘top up’ to the CRA, depending on the category in which they fell.
In the absence of these and other critical pieces of information, the package could not be concluded. Hence, the former Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence, was unable to present it to Cabinet for approval.
“I was, therefore, aghast when the PS, Department of the Public Service, by Memorandum to the PS, MoPH that was copied to the Ministers of Finance and Public Service, purported to have approved a COVID risk allowance, as recommended by PS, MPH. After my intervention that the approval was done without the requisite information being submitted and without the knowledge of the Ministry of Finance, this Memorandum was put on ‘pause’; it may have been withdrawn, subsequently,” Jordan concluded in his letter.
Even as the PPP/C denounces the coalition for rejecting health workers’ requests for the increase in risk allowances, it refuses to commit to the same.
Instead, the PPP/C continues to tout the $150M that was budgeted for health workers, which is set to be expended in improving their working conditions.

 

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