So, all that you saw was the crisis: healthcare workers at all public hospitals abandoning their posts for an hour or more at a time, to protest. And it had the desired effect. As they say, power concedes nothing without a demand, and their public demand caused the government to spring into action right quick. The Minister of Health and Wellness hastily convened a meeting with all the stakeholders to fix what is, essentially, an administrative problem with how shift workers' weekly pay and overtime is calculated.
And, this morning, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, and the Ministry of Labour along with the Financial Secretary met with the executive of the Nurses Association of Belize. By 2:00 pm they had put out a statement to say, basically, "problem fix".
The press spoke to Bernard via zoom today about a quite simple administrative problem that provoked major outrage in a public healthcare fraternity that's clearly fed up:
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"The overtime calculations will be calculated on a monthly basis as opposed to every week or every day. That calculation will revert back to where it was calculated monthly so that not to affect a nurse who works on a shift basis where they were being deducted hours if they did not complete the weekly amount according to what the details were provided to us. The other issue was the short hour deduction that was made this past pay period for the August 2022 payroll. That immediately sent shockwave I would put across the medical profession and I don't give nurses or the doctors or any of these frontline workers, shift workers who as I said in that meeting to the ministry of finance a feeling in their pockets. How can you expect these persons basic salary to be deducted and expect that they are to survive for the rest of the month."
"My position and the ministry position along with the nursing association of Belize was that we revert that back immediately and that we reinstate those deductions. All those persons that had that short-hour deducted will be paid no longer than the 9th September. We are hoping that they can be paid by Friday and at the same time, the overtime sheet which for the next few days, in fact Friday, the new OT submission has to go in and so it was crucial that we agreed that the new overtime sheet will be adjusted so that it can reflect the total hours worked."
Jules Vasquez
"You know Said Musa taught me an old creole proverb: "when a baby wants to cry, you just have to watch him." Is it that these people are just at really a breaking point, that when they saw their payslip, they're like okay that's it, I'm done."
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Thats exactly the straw that broke the camel's back and that's why we had to get very much into action and address that problem and we support their position. I fully stand in solidarity with our nurses and our doctors and our frontline people. They have toiled, they have worked, they have given extra time to the people of this country and we cannot have allowed this to go far. Some of them feel that they have been abused, they've been overworked - you see the posters that they had out there today and its their sentiments. They have a right to express those sentiments. I take no offence to any of those sentiments. We saw this coming and yes, it happened that we reached to this stage, but we cannot say that the ministry of health and wellness did not do its part in trying to address this."
Jules Vasquez
"So then were you caught off-guard, minister?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Thats right."
Jules Vasquez
"Were you then caught off-guard when you hear on Saturday there is a walkout and then all these walkouts planned for Monday. Did they betrayed that good faith undertaking that you gave on the 22nd to solve it in 3 weeks?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Yes, I was taken off-guard, we did not expect that to have happen. I would have hope as I said we would have been able to meet today, address that problem and gat back to the Nursing Association immediately so that they could have pass that information to their members to address that overtime matter. So, yeah, it happens. Thats the life of governance."
And, "the life of governance" also means answering questions about acute shortages of critical supplies and medicines - things as basic as Tylenol - which are not available at the Central Medical Stores warehouse. We asked about those avoidable problems with the medical supply chain:
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Theres many other issues that have been raised by the Nursing Association of Belize and one of them having to do with the main problem as well, lack of medications, lack of medical supplies and in some instances, they have mentioned that some areas they did not gauze. By the end of September, we should stabilize those issues and the regions and all the various facilities should be getting their medications and medical supplies on a timely manner. We are also looking at the internal procedures in terms of how people make request from the regions to the central medical store and how timely that delivery is done back to the regions."
Jules Vasquez
"Have there been critical breakdowns in the supply of much needed and every day medicine for hypertension pain killers etc.?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Let me put it plainly, this issue is not just now. This issue was coming and it occurred in the late last year and early before the previous administration too and it just started to exposed itself. We are signing contracts in early August; I mean we are almost in this case would have been almost half in first fiscal year. So what we are also looking at is that we want to improve that situation. I am prepared and I have said this this morning to the members we met this morning, I'm prepared to take to cabinet that we need to deal with the tendering process far much earlier as opposed to doing it after the new fiscal year. I would admit to the fact that has been an issue, but we are working on improving those situations. I have been very adamant with the people at CMS."
Jules Vasquez
"Has this been an area of slippage?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Well, I wouldn't put it that is an area of slippage, Jules. I think it's the timeliness and that's the reason why I am stating that we have to fix that part."
Jules Vasquez
"We don't have Tylenol available at CMS, minister. Thats real. When a central medical store does not have acetaminophen to supply, that is a critical fail. That is on the verge of being a fail state. Who's responsible?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Thats what we are working on and that's exactly what I said, we must hold people accountable and that inventory audit that I requested will reveal that and that's where we then in the administrative decision to make the changes necessary."
And Minister Bernard also alluded to the managerial problems in the various regions - especially the south - which have led to these spontaneous walkouts:
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"We are hoping that over the next few weeks and as we go along meeting with these various regions and the staff, we would be able to hear from them and make necessary adjustments. If we have to make changes, I'm saying this publicly here - where we have to make changes then we will have to do so and I hope that the people will support us, because at the end of the day if there is mismanagement at the local level, then that person he/she will have to either step aside or reflect and say I need to improve."
"Tomorrow when I meet with the staff, we're going to meet with just the staff, because we want to give them the opportunity to openly express what is it that the challenges they are facing and then after that meeting we will meeting with the administrative team, so that we could set out proper guidelines, make amends where need to make and if there is needs for us and we if we see that there are issues that wont be able to be fix, then we have to make necessary changes."
Jules Vasquez
"How many of these administrative issues are due to the perception that Ms. Monima or other persons were moved around after election because of well people may have been perceived to have loyalty to the previous administration. But how much of it is due to those changes which may not have been made for the optimal management reasons?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"I don't know that it has to do with those changes. But there are personality issues and we must be real. In every working environment there are going to be personal issues and we have to fix that."
