Finance Minister Expresses Gratitude To Healthcare Workers

Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, has praised healthcare professionals who have been working on the frontline of the national coronavirus (COVID-19) response programme.

Dr. Clarke highlighted the work of representatives of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA), and Jamaica Midwives Association (JMA), in particular, to whom he expressed heartfelt gratitude “for the amazing response to the pandemic that you and your members have undertaken this year.”

He was speaking during the latest Heads of Agreement signing with unions/bargaining units representing public sector workers, for the government’s 12-month four per cent salary increase for the April 2021 to March 2022 contract period.

The signing took place at the Ministry of Finance in Kingston on December 22.

Dr. Clarke said Jamaica’s health system has experienced an unprecedented crisis sparked by the pandemic which, he noted, also precipitated significant economic fallout.

He pointed out that amidst the challenges in public health, “there was no work from home [option] for nurses, doctors and midwives.”

Dr. Clarke said while many persons have had the opportunity to work from home with the pandemic’s onset, “on the contrary, the work became harder and more intense, and the risk was greater” for health professionals as “you had to be out… tending to the sick and the infirmed.

“On behalf of a grateful nation, we say thank you,” the Minister stated.

General Secretary of the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE) John Levy, who attended the signing ceremony and expressed similar sentiments, noted that the health professionals’ role “in assisting us… has been a very difficult one.

“I ask them to keep the faith and to keep going in the interest of all of us, and we will do whatever is possible… at UCASE… to assist in the process,” he stated

NAJ President, Patsy Henry pointed out that 2021 has been “a year of challenges… [and] a year of uncertainties [as] the pandemic has…created wave upon wave upon wave [of infections].”

She said throughout the period, nurses and other healthcare professionals “have had to be at the forefront” of the fight to contain COVID-19 transmission and casualties.

“Even when others were able to relax a little bit… we have still had to stand and be there. It has been a year that we hope… we will never see again,” Mrs. Henry said.

JMA President Bobby-Joe Campbell, noted that during the no-movement periods, midwives had to identify ways of attending to women in communities that were under lockdown because “sexual and reproductive health [service delivery] had to continue.”

“Our midwives in hospitals are doing much more compared to previous years… [as are] our midwives in primary care,” she pointed out.

Ms. Campbell assured that the members remain committed to “delivering services to our clients.”

The NAJ, JMA, JMDA, UCASE, Academic Staff Association of the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (ASACASE); and Jamaica Association of Education Officers (JAEO), which represent a combined 10,000 public workers, are the latest signatories to the Heads of Agreement.

They bring to 31, the number of unions/bargaining units signing on behalf of public sector workers

The total number of employees covered now stands at some 80,000 or approximately 80 per cent of the workforce.