SWRHA staff in lunchtime protest

EMPLOYEES of the South-West Regional Health authority (SWRHA) embarked on a lunchtime protest outside the authority’s administrative offices yesterday, against what they claimed was management’s refusal to pay a 15 percent salary increase. The employees, who marched around the building at Paradise Pasture in San Fernando, claimed the increase was made available to all RHA monthly staff, but the protesting employees said they were yet to receive theirs.

Chairman of the SWRHA, Imtiaz Ahamad, clarified the issue of the increase for Newsday, and described the workers’ protest as premature and wrongly-instigated. The 15 percent salary increase, Ahamad said, was for permanent and temporary monthly-paid employees of the RHAs. However, there are employees, the SWRHA chairman explained, who are in a certain classification, such as those who have been seconded from the Ministry of Health to the RHAs. The protesting employees are outside of this classification, Ahamad said, “and therefore this 15 percent does not apply.” The chairman said he was taken aback and was appalled by the lunchtime protest because neither he nor acting SWRHA CEO Michael Harris “were aware the employees had a grouse in the first place.”