Turning now to news coming out of yesterday's marathon Senate Meeting, we told you how the Upper House Chamber continued their deliberations on parliamentary business late into the night.
Their meeting ran for a little over 9 and a half hours, but in the end, there were 2 very important matters that caused disagreement among the Senators.
The Leader of Government Business introduced a package of draft bills which the Briceno administration wants to pass, in order to abolish Dr. Marvin Manzanero's post. As we told you, the government says that it is a move at restructuring where the office of the Director of Health Services will be replaced by 2 new positions: a Director of Public Health and Wellness as well as a Director of Hospital Services.
But, among that package of bills was the amendment to the KHMH Act, which will allow for a member of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital's Union to sit on the Hospital's Board of Governors.
Here's the debate on the bills to address the DHS post, as well as that favorable amendment to the KHMH Union:
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, UDP Senator
"We all know what this is. You don't have a good reason to dismiss or fire the director of health services, you can't justify removing him, you can't justify your accusations against him, so what do you do? Since you can't eliminate him, you find a way to eliminate his post and then you eliminate him. If this government did not want to work with Dr. Manzanero, they need only tell him and sit down with him and have enough respect to say Dr. Manza we don't want you in that post anymore, we have our own person that we want to put there. The PUP can pass 10 bills to remove Dr. Manzanero, but can't pass one little simple bill to put the minimum wage at $5."
Hon. Luis Luke Martinez, Senator, Labour and Civil Society
"The national trade union congress is not going to throw away the baby along with the bathwater and we cannot support most of these bills, but we can certainly support the amendment to the KHMH hospital authority bill which includes the representation of a union member, but we cannot support the rest of legislation."
Hon. Osmany Salas, NGO Senator
"You know we can't take this any other way but to see this as an attempt to legally remove the current DHS and bypassing the constitutionally appointed role of the Public Services Commission that has refused to remove him, because there have not been sufficient grounds to remove him through that process. It's unfortunate that it is being handled this way."
