MPATT talks continue next week

Montano met with the chairman of the registration board Clive St Rose yesterday morning at the ministry, Riverside Plaza, Port-of-Spain, in an effort to prevent any interruption to the health service after MPATT announced that doctors would stop working overtime from last Friday if its application was not treated fairly.

In an interview yesterday, MPATT vice-president Dr Rajendra Persad said a meeting took place with Montano from 3 pm and took approximately 45 minutes.

Persad said the minister indicated that the talks with St Rose centred on how to move forward. Montano, he said, was also awaiting information from the board. Another meeting was tentatively set for next Wednesday.

“We are giving them time required to act. We are acting in good faith and we expect them to come up with proposals,” said Persad,

MPATT sent in an application to represent the ERHA doctors in October 2002 but the board, last July, set bargaining units which, according to MPATT, “split doctors into two groups making each group a small part of a much larger bargaining unit comprising all different categories of workers.”

At a media briefing last Friday, Montano said he had limited powers under the legislation (Industrial Relations Act) but he and Health Minister John Rahael had no problem with MPATT’s objective “to have doctors represented exclusively by MPATT—which is a registered union.”