TRHA reaffirms overtime pay amid nurses’ warning

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty has reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to fair and trans­par­ent over­time com­pen­sa­tion for nurs­ing staff, as in­dus­tri­al ten­sions con­tin­ue to build with­in the pub­lic health sec­tor.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on March 27, the Au­thor­i­ty said it re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing nurs­es are prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed for ad­di­tion­al du­ties, while main­tain­ing ef­fi­cien­cy in health­care de­liv­ery across To­ba­go.

The state­ment comes days af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion warned that nurs­es could with­hold ex­tra-du­ty ser­vices over Gov­ern­ment’s move to stan­dard­ise pool rates.

TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said the as­so­ci­a­tion is pre­pared to push back against the changes, ar­gu­ing that nurs­es are not ob­lig­at­ed to ac­cept ex­tra shifts un­der re­vised arrange­ments.

“If they are man­dat­ed to work ex­tra du­ty, the au­thor­i­ty will have to pay over­time, time and a half, dou­ble time, triple time,” Stu­art said, warn­ing of po­ten­tial cost im­pli­ca­tions for health au­thor­i­ties.

He added that the move has sparked grow­ing anger among nurs­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cialised staff, de­scrib­ing it as an un­jus­ti­fied roll­back of long-stand­ing arrange­ments.

Against that back­drop, the TRHA said the Nurs­ing Pool Sys­tem, which was sus­pend­ed dur­ing the 2018 to 2019 pe­ri­od, is cur­rent­ly un­der re­view as part of ef­forts to strength­en work­force man­age­ment and im­prove staffing ef­fi­cien­cy.

It ex­plained that, in the in­ter­im, nurs­es who per­form ad­di­tion­al du­ties are com­pen­sat­ed for over­time in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished frame­work for the sec­tor.

Un­der that sys­tem, over­time is cal­cu­lat­ed at time and a half for the first four hours, dou­ble time for the next four hours, and triple time for any hours worked be­yond eight.

The Au­thor­i­ty said over­time rates vary de­pend­ing on an of­fi­cer’s po­si­tion with­in the salary scale. It not­ed that Reg­is­tered Nurs­es cur­rent­ly re­ceive be­tween ap­prox­i­mate­ly $64.96 and $173.67 per hour in over­time, while En­rolled Nurs­ing As­sis­tants earn be­tween about $50.43 and $132.14 per hour.

The TRHA said it re­mains fo­cused on en­sur­ing all nurs­ing per­son­nel are fair­ly com­pen­sat­ed while con­tin­u­ing to de­liv­er ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able health­care ser­vices to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

It added that all nurs­ing staff will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­in the es­tab­lished scope of their roles and pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, in line with ex­ist­ing poli­cies and clin­i­cal guide­lines.