By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Nurses Union president Amancha Williams yesterday voiced her anger at the delay of honorarium payments to COVID healthcare workers, calling it “deceptive and wicked”.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health issued a statement announcing the delay of payments to August. Health Minister Renward Wells had initially promised that the payments would be issued at the end of this month.

Ms Williams has, since last summer, agitated for the government to make the payments it promised and her members were looking forward to seeing the money in their salary yesterday. She called the delay “unacceptable.”

“It is so sad that the Minister of Health has failed the people again,” she said. “They’ve had more than a year and a half to work out their list. They know exactly what they wanted to do from March. We met with the minister and talked about the Budget, creating and going through the list, verifying and ensuring.

“The minister said that he would have, and I quote his exact words, ‘I would pay half in June and complete it in July, but I will go ahead and pay everybody one time in July’. He said that to the reporters on numerous occasions.

“Excuses! Excuses! Excuses! If the truth be told, he is not telling the truth. We are very grateful in a season like this. We have waited for an honorarium and we were told that a number of nurses wouldn’t get it.

“We’ve even said to the minister, ‘Come on let’s sit down and talk. Give everybody a little something because everybody played a part’.”

Ms Williams said nurses on every island played a role in the fight against COVID and should be given “a little something” for their efforts, which in most cases included risking their own lives.

“We have so much entry points,” she continued. “We worked very hard to keep relatives alive; giving of ourselves, using techniques to survive in a time like this … a pandemic that seems not to want to go away.

“We’ve lost six nurses from 2020 to now in various places … various institutions; SRC (Sandilands), Department of Public Health and PMH. The morale with the nurses in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas has dropped to the floor. So as the Minister hires (new nurses) they will be leaving. If he brings in 64, a hundred will be leaving.

“We, as a union, thought that there were ways of making things better for the people. We came up with increases, scarcity allowances and benefits that don’t even require funding – a day off, a stress day, birthday’s off – just to ensure that our members were happy in working in a time when every time we turn around we are announcing death.”

The union chief pointed out that there was much stress and sadness over the past year in the field of healthcare due to COVID-19, the show of appreciation would have been welcoming.

“We’ve seen loved ones crying … mother died, daughter died, dad died, uncle died … of the same family, back to back,” she said continuing. “This is not just emotionally, psychologically taxing …. It brought a lot of stress among us. At the end of the day are we not even worth to be considered or thought about to say, ‘how would they feel? I know I’ve been promising. Let me fix it.”

“We are dealing with greedy men with wicked ideas and only thinking about themselves while destroying a whole community of good people. I’m not scared to say that this is deceptive and wicked … the way they move,” she claimed.