Labour Minister Tells Nurses Take What You Can Get Now

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Labour Minister Pearnel Charles is advising disgruntled nurses to accept what the government is offering to pay them now as the protracted pay dispute between the two parties rumbles on.Representatives of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) walked out of a meeting with Charles and Health Minister Ruddy Spencer on Friday and said they would take their issues as high as Prime Minister Bruce Golding. The NAJ is demanding more than one billion Jamaica dollars (US$11.2 million) in overdue pay for its members, but the government said it will pay J$157 million (US1.75 million) this month and proposed a payment plan for the rest of the monies.

The NAJ officials said they would be seeking a meeting with Golding and Finance Minister Audley Shaw to get the sums owed to them. But Charles said such a gathering is unlikely to take place.

“At this stage, I don’t know that the Minister of Finance will meet the nurses and I doubt that the Prime Minister will meet them. Unless the matter is properly sent back to the local level by the Minister of Labour, none of those ministers, in my opinion, will meet the nurses,” he said.

“We recognize the state of the nurses and their jobs in the country, but the country and not the government, cannot pay as Jamaica’s financial situation at this time, will not allow the nurses or any other organization to get any funding because the country just does not have it,” the Labour Minister added.

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