Dear Editor,
It seems that my advocacy in the ‘Voice of the Liberal Democrats’ column in KN on May 11, on behalf of the 800 plus nurses across Guyana finally woke up a voice, supposedly inside the GPSU, from its decade long slumber (‘Without the GPSU conditions of service for nurses would have been worse’ SN, May 24). Well good for A Brutus and 44 others. We would now expect some timelier advocacy on behalf of all 800 plus nurses from the signatories and the leadership of the GPSU. If that is achieved, then my task is at an end.
I will leave aside the personal ranting from the writer A Brutus and 44 others. But before I leave this issue, I want to make one thing clear to those who claim to speak on behalf of the GPSU and 5 per cent of the nursing population. The GPSU, Patrick Yarde or the signatories to the letter neither singly nor collectively have the power to deny me my constitutional right to associate with, agitate on behalf of and advocate for the 800 plus nurses. Once these 800 plus nurses continue to suffer under a broken healthcare system, in part because the GPSU failed terribly at its job over the last decade, then my pen will always have ink.
If we are to follow the A Brutus logic, then because the “Jagdeo/Ramotar government ignored all the ILO conventions” and all their cases referred to the then Ministry of Labour under the PPP were ignored, then the GPSU is absolved of its responsibilities to the nurses. What about the next steps? What about industrial action? What about going on a nurses’ strike until their needs are met ‒ even half way?
So listing all those achievements as massive victories for the nurses is most deceptive, since none of them achieved the core milestones identified by the nurses in a PAHO study to which I was privy – a living wage and better working conditions.
One just has to look at the video from Francis Bailey on social media highlighting the condition of work for the nurses at the West Demerara Hospital and you will understand that the GPSU is trying to pull wool over people’s eyes on this issue. All they are interested in is the union dues, the union salaries and perks and the connections with the politicians. The issues affecting the nurses appear to be at the bottom of their list of priorities. Even the untrained garbage collectors in the Caribbean Islands work under better conditions and for better salaries than our trained nurses in Guyana. Shame on the signatories for trying to pass off such substandard union-led advocacy as acceptable; it is not. The GPSU has failed the nurses of Guyana and pathetically so.
PAHO did a study on this crisis and found that an estimated 26 per cent of our nurses are migrating. For emphasis, statistically, every 4 years the entire nursing population that is trained becomes unavailable to the Guyanese system because they have all migrated. Why would 26 per cent of trained nurses leave a system that pays a living wage? Why would nurses leave this land of many waters for hurricane-infested islands in the Caribbean to work as second-class employees? The answers lie in that PAHO report which outlined the reasons why nurses said they wanted to reluctantly leave Guyana:
- Poor conditions of work
- Poor conditions of service
- Lack of opportunities for professional development
- The desire for a better quality of life for themselves and families
- Better salaries (a living wage)
Only an anaemic union would allow a government to violate the ILO convention for a decade and allow the above weaknesses (1-5) to persist and not call a mass general strike to make sure the minimum demands of the nurses are met.
That is why I called on the nurses to form their own association and petition the Minister, since they will make more progress talking directly to the Minister than depending on the GPSU to advocate on their behalf.
The plight of the nurses of Guyana in the public healthcare system matters to me. Once the workers, farmers and the masses of Guyana are stuck in such horrible conditions, we must never stop agitating and “who vex, let them stay vex”; that is not my business.
Yours faithfully,
Sase Singh
