Beckles urges PM to immediately fix ‘healthcare crisis’

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of ig­nor­ing a deep­en­ing health­care cri­sis, call­ing on her to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the na­tion and out­line a plan to fix the sys­tem.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter “can­not con­tin­ue to ig­nore the suf­fer­ing of cit­i­zens by turn­ing a blind eye to the col­lapse of the health­care sys­tem.”

“She must ad­dress the na­tion with a clear plan to re­solve this cri­sis and en­gage di­rect­ly in re­spect­ful di­a­logue with the na­tion’s health­care work­ers,” Beck­les added.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader was sharply crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, ar­gu­ing that its re­sponse has been dis­mis­sive and out of touch with the re­al­i­ties fac­ing both pa­tients and front­line staff.

“The Prime Min­is­ter seems to be­lieve that hid­ing her head in the sand and adopt­ing a dis­mis­sive at­ti­tude will make the health­care dis­as­ter her Gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed dis­ap­pear,” Beck­les said, adding that such an ap­proach was “baf­fling.”

She point­ed to grow­ing strain across the pub­lic health sys­tem, in­clud­ing long de­lays for treat­ment, un­der­staffed hos­pi­tals and con­cerns over de­layed pay­ments to nurs­es.

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of down­play­ing the scale of the cri­sis.

“It is clear that the Gov­ern­ment is down­play­ing the scale of the cri­sis, at­tempt­ing to keep the pop­u­la­tion in the dark about the full ex­tent of the col­lapse un­der her watch,” she said.

Beck­les in­sist­ed the Prime Min­is­ter must “im­me­di­ate­ly ac­count for the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ac­tion” and pro­vide a clear path for­ward.