Doctors face new year without contracts

Senior Regional Health Authority doctors may be without contracts for the new year as negotiations for House Officers are ongoing and discussions on new terms and conditions for Registrars and Consultants have not started.

Vice-president of the Medical Professionals Association Dr Lakhan Roop said the Chief Personnel Officer is to give a determination on overtime and gratuity for House Officers. He said the RHAs now seem to be trying to rush for new contracts to be negotiated before December 31, but they still haven’t presented new proposals for Consultants and Registrars. He said actual negotiations only resumed three weeks ago. Prior to this two meetings took place, one in September and another in October, but these were “to discuss wording of clauses.” Roop said a meeting scheduled for last Wednesday was postponed and negotiations will resume next week.

Contracts for RHA doctors expired on December 31, 2002 and the health sector was faced with the possibility of the majority of doctors not turning up for work on January 1. To avert a shut down of health facilities across the country, the RHAs gave doctors letters of continuation in which they continued work under the terms and conditions of their expired contracts until a new agreement was finalised. Despite the intervention of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on the Health Sector and the assurance by its chairman, Dr Lenny Saith, in February that RHAs should work toward completing negotiations for doctors by March 28, this has not happened. Roop said doctors have been working on letters of continuation ever since, initially for one month, then a year-end expiry date was given. He said the letter cannot be used to secure a loan. “A bank will not honour it,” he said.