By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

HEALTHCARE union officials are expressing displeasure with the roll out of COVID-19 honorariums that awarded non-frontline workers over nurses and doctors who work daily in the fight against the pandemic.

Last week, it was revealed that the driver and personal assistant of Minister of Health Renward Wells were each given more than $1,000 in honorariums. On Monday, he said the two workers were asked to return their gifts and they had agreed to do so.

On Friday, a purported list of recipients of the honorariums made the rounds on social media. The leaked list contained the names of the recipients, the departments in which they worked and the amounts given which ranged from $1,200 to $5,000.

President of Bahamas Nurses Union Amancha Williams was unhappy about this and said the money was designed to say “thank you” to healthcare workers for risking their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The honorarium was a gift,” Nurse Williams said. “The honorarium provides a gift to say, ‘thank you for the hard work’. This was supposed to be paid from March to June. That’s the time frame they were to pay it. They waited a whole year and a half. Here it comes, the healthcare workers are upset because they paid persons who didn’t even touch a COVID patient. That wasn’t what the honorarium was sent for.

“We had a major problem. The PHA (Public Hospitals Authority) list was not done correctly. The DPH (Department of Public health) list to me was satisfactory. The PHA list was off. “We’ve had minimum complaints out of DPH. You have nurses in Grand Bahama but only (some) of them received payment. Only eight nurses. Something is wrong with that picture.

“The sad thing is that the secretary was paid the same thing as the nurses. Tell me what the secretary did? That killed the people’s spirit. That is what happens when you don’t want the union to be a part of what you are doing. You cannot say you don’t want the union to be a part of your decision making.”

Nurse Williams said supervisors should have had input when the government was making choices to pay honorariums.

“The X-ray department, the phlebotomist, the auxiliary nurse, the registered nurse, the doctor, the maid that cleans various areas and the porters,” she said. “Those were the people who are to be paid. The people got very upset because they would rather pay the secretary, rather than pay someone who actually did the work. I feel something is wrong with that.

“We worked on the frontline. The others were in the office or they didn’t even come in. They worked from home and they have them on the list to collect money. And, the nurse who was actually exposed to COVID is left off the list. The hospital and the clinics never closed down and nurses went to work every day. So tell me why nurses were not on that list?

“The supervisors should have been able to classify everybody in terms of the areas they work in. So you are left with a bunch of disgruntled people. They have drawn the line. They are saying, ‘we are already working in poor conditions and at the end of the day we had enough.’”

She said it was tragic that the government sought to pay an honorarium to a secretary and driver when many healthcare workers were not paid anything after working continuously and eventually contracting the deadly virus themselves.

“My union and my team were the first to write that document. We wrote to secure our members and we left it up to the leaders to choose those leaders that, with bravery, went above and beyond the call of duty to fight COVID. So why weren’t they paid?”

Dr John Dillett, vice president of the Consultant Physicians Staff Association, took issue with the roll out of the honorariums. He feels input should have come from healthcare unions.

“Many people have not been paid, many people have been paid,” he said. “I think the way that it was rolled out … the communication that was given … The announcement was placed in the press before a discussion was had. Again, no discussion with the unions, no discussions with health bodies, things released in the press, so people are left scrambling trying to figure out what actually is going on.

“I think the unrest that is going on in our hospital right now it’s pretty obvious that nurses, doctors and allied staff are unhappy with how things are and that is not just about the honorarium.

“I think lack of collaboration and lack of communication with health bodies has probably led to some of the discontent and some of the problems we are having, perhaps could have been avoided if the administrators and the politicians had sat down and outlined the plan and the timeline accordingly.”

He said if collaboration were done, the unrest at the country’s healthcare institutions could have been avoided.

The PHA said in a statement last week that department heads submitted names of people who should get the honorariums. On Monday, Mr Wells said the people who received an honorarium were recommended by a select committee within the Ministry of Health.