Tancoo blanks PSA

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Af­ter se­cur­ing $3.8 bil­lion in ar­rears for its mem­bers, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) is now seek­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for ad­di­tion­al back pay for health­care work­ers who are out­side of the re­cent­ly signed “ten per cent” agree­ment deal it signed with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

How­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo says this is high­ly un­like­ly, stress­ing that ar­rears will on­ly be paid to work­ers cov­ered un­der the De­cem­ber 2nd agree­ment signed be­tween the PSA and the CPO.

Af­ter the PSA signed the agree­ment re­cent­ly, hun­dreds of health­care work­ers who are PSA mem­bers but em­ployed di­rect­ly with re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs), had ques­tioned whether they too would re­ceive ad­just­ed salaries and back­pay by Christ­mas.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the salaries of some RHA work­ers were not card­ed to be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ad­just­ed fol­low­ing the sign­ing of the “ten per cent” agree­ment. Sources said while work­ers at­tached to the Health Min­istry will ben­e­fit from the “ten per cent agree­ment,” PSA mem­bers di­rect­ly em­ployed by the RHAs are not cov­ered un­der that deal and will have to un­der­go a sep­a­rate process to ac­cess sim­i­lar ben­e­fits.
That process re­quires the in­volve­ment of the Min­is­ter of Health, CPO and a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day. But via a me­dia re­lease sent out around 4 pm, the PSA com­mit­ted to meet­ing with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to sign a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment sim­i­lar to the one fi­nalised with the CPO on De­cem­ber 2.

It’s a com­plex is­sue, how­ev­er, as ac­cord­ing to the PSA, there are three cat­e­gories of work­ers with­in the RHAs: pub­lic of­fi­cers still em­ployed by the Health Min­istry, pub­lic of­fi­cers who have been trans­ferred from the pub­lic ser­vice in­to the RHAs, and work­ers hired di­rect­ly by the RHAs.

In the re­lease, Thomas ex­plained, “The Min­istry of Health work­ers in the RHAs will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit from this (ten per cent) agree­ment.”

But as it per­tains to the oth­er staff mem­bers, Thomas said, “For RHA work­ers who trans­ferred from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, the PSA must now meet with the RHAs to set­tle and sign a sim­i­lar Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment for your in­crease in salary, al­lowances and ar­rears.”

And for those di­rect­ly em­ployed by the RHAs, Thomas said, “As these agree­ments are signed for Min­istry of Health of­fi­cers in the RHAs and of­fi­cers who have trans­ferred to the RHA, the re­main­ing RHA em­ploy­ees are nor­mal­ly ad­just­ed to main­tain par­i­ty across the work­force. In ef­fect, once the PSA set­tles in­creas­es for Min­istry of Health work­ers and for trans­ferred work­ers, all RHA em­ploy­ees ben­e­fit from the up­grad­ed salaries and re­sult­ing ar­rears.”

Thomas added, “We look for­ward to set­tling these agree­ments for the RHAs as soon as pos­si­ble.”
On the ad­vance cash pay­ment that was promised to pub­lic ser­vants by De­cem­ber 23 as part of their over­all back­pay, Thomas said they will be seek­ing the same agree­ment for the health work­ers.

“Notwith­stand­ing that these agree­ments re­main out­stand­ing, the PSA has writ­ten to all chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers re­quest­ing an ad­vance on your ar­rears to be paid on or be­fore the 23rd De­cem­ber, 2025.”

How­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo last evening told Guardian Me­dia it was un­like­ly Gov­ern­ment could fa­cil­i­tate such a re­quest.

He said, “The on­ly ar­rears that was ne­go­ti­at­ed for and agreed to, and which in­clud­ed a par­tial pay­ment in De­cem­ber, is that which the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced in Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing the set­tle­ment be­tween the CPO and PSA.”

Tan­coo added, “The ad­min­is­tra­tive work to make that agreed pay­ment pos­si­ble took quite a few long days. Such pay­ments are not pos­si­ble overnight and with­out plan­ning. Fur­ther, it must be fac­tored in the coun­try’s cash flow, as the PSA and CPO know.”

Asked if this was a “no” to the union, Tan­coo re­ferred Guardian Me­dia back to his first state­ment.
Guardian Me­dia then asked the min­is­ter if the PSA could try again in the new year to se­cure a deal for the ad­di­tion­al health­care work­ers.

Tan­coo replied, “That’s a mat­ter for the union to de­ter­mine.”

CPO Din­di­al could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ad­vance cash pay­ment of ar­rears for PSA mem­bers un­der the agree­ment signed with the CPO could range from $10,000 to $20,000 af­ter tax­es, de­pend­ing on the length of em­ploy­ment. 

Speak­ing un­der anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, an RHA-em­ployed work­er told Guardian Me­dia, “Sad to say, health­care work­ers, who are on the ab­solute front­line do­ing the most in des­per­ate times, are the ones be­ing over­looked. And in my opin­ion, that is com­plete non­sense. Mean­while, the ma­jor­i­ty of oth­er min­istry work­ers were in the com­fort of their homes dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.”

The work­er added, “I’m a mem­ber of the PSA for the past ten years. I pay fees every sin­gle month for ten years and just like every­one else that will be giv­en their ad­vance to have a mer­ry Christ­mas, I should re­ceive it too.”

Mean­while, for­mer PSA gen­er­al sec­re­tary and cur­rent RHA work­er Oral Saun­ders said a meet­ing was held yes­ter­day be­tween PSA rep­re­sen­ta­tives and health­care work­ers, where they were told the union is seek­ing to get mon­ey for the work­ers who did not fall un­der the “ten per cent” arrange­ment.
Saun­ders said this sit­u­a­tion had been a blow to the morale of sev­er­al work­ers, some of whom are con­tem­plat­ing a “sick out.”