By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Nurses Union president Amancha Williams says the union has no issues with a proposed industrial agreement that is nearing completion, adding it will be signed soon.

Manager of the Industrial Relations Unit Cindira Bain said on Friday she believed in a few days or so both sides should be in a position to sign the nurses’ industrial agreement.

“I would like to say that I believe that the nurses union is about 99 percent completed on their industrial agreement and that would be on the PHA side as well as the Department of Public Service,” Ms Bain said Friday. “We have just concluded their financial package yesterday and all of the financial articles attached to that industrial agreement.”

Ms Williams shared similar sentiments about the industrial agreement.

“We don’t have a problem with the industrial agreement. We’re working on it. We’re just waiting for when they tell us to come and sign,” she told The Tribune.

“Yeah, we’re going to sign soon,” she repeated when asked for a timeline for that signing.

The union president further elaborated on some of what has been agreed to for this new industrial agreement.

“We have an increase in salary,” Ms Williams said. “The prime minister promised to do certain things. So, we’re going to see a retention bonus for the nurses. We’re going to see an increase in salary, the increments and we’re going to see other benefits that are due to the nurses and there is even an article that the government - we’ve created an article in there. The government was pleased to accept that article and they’re going to look at it more deeply to make it put it in the books.”

Asked what the percentage of the increases was, she replied: “We can’t talk about that in public – there’s good benefits.

“There’s increments and there’s a retention plan for nurses. We’ve joined on with the Ministry of Housing which have listing already for almost 30 nurses already being approved and they’re just waiting for the houses to start building and we sure know that the government that this is the initiative by the government with the Bahamas Nurses Union and this is one way of a retention. We’ve done some things with the various areas, mileage, and various other benefits in our industrial agreement that we speak to.”

Prime Minister Phillip “Brave” Davis insisted last week that his administration is living up to promises it made to nurses and teachers despite the opposition’s claim that the government has failed to adequately address their concerns.

He claimed: “We paid them all their back pay and all sums that were due to the nurses, that was done.”

However, Mrs Williams stated: “We still have some outstanding back pay in various areas, and so we’ve had a meeting with the prime minister and we’ve talked about where in areas and basically the majority of that back pay really comes from the Department of Public Health.

“The nurses there it takes a really long time to process. There is so much red tape and we’re asking when things are just settled down in the government we need a commission of our own so that we can hire these nurses on a quick basis.

“We have a number of nurses still waiting for seven, eight increments and so forth and so on in increments that are due to them. And they’ve been waiting at least a little while and it’s not due to the new government that came in. It’s been there, under previous governments under different administrations.”