Editorial

A time for effective communication

Monday, March 15, 2010

JAMAICAN nurses, like other public sector categories of workers hamstrung by a wage freeze, are struggling with chronically low salaries despite being asked to go the extra mile.

So their anger at the Government's delay in delivering retroactive payments and failure to honour long-promised reclassification is entirely understandable.

Nonetheless, this newspaper was disturbed at recent nurses' protests -- linked to reclassification -- which reportedly left some health-care institutions short-staffed. The episode forced the Minister of Labour, Mr Pearnel Charles, to seek a court injunction barring the nurses from taking further industrial action.

Separate and apart from the legal aspect, we believe that withdrawal of service by nurses, doctors and other essential health-care workers is morally unacceptable. That is so, for the simple and obvious reason of life and death.

But also, Government has a responsibility to be especially sensitive to the needs and welfare of our nurses and others in the essential services.

For that reason, this newspaper was equally disturbed at reports of a breakdown in discussions between Mr Charles and executive members of the nurses union, the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ).

We are told in Saturday's edition of the Daily Observer that the NAJ executive walked out of a meeting with Mr Charles after he rejected their demands for an urgent meeting with the prime minister, Mr Bruce Golding, and the finance minister, Mr Audley Shaw.

We are not clear about the precise reasons for the Government's denial of the nurses' request. Surely, regardless of the possible implication to be drawn from Mr Charles's reported comment, it can't have had anything to do with the NAJ President Ms Edith Allwood-Anderson's 'dissing' of the prime minister on Duke Street last year.

It seems to us that the Government, public sector workers and the entire country need to be very focused and clear. For the oft-repeated reasons related to the worldwide economic recession and an economy that has become addicted to high-cost borrowing, the entire country is between a rock and a hard place. The Government is, for all intents and purposes, broke.

Hence, the return to a borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund and its accompanying tough conditionalities.

In the current circumstances it seems foolhardy to expect that wage-related withdrawal of services by nurses or for that matter any other public sector body will help their cause. Rather, this newspaper believes such actions can only make the overall situation worse for the country.

Equally, it seems to us, the Government is in no position to be high-handed or aloof.

Instead, Mr Golding and his Government should welcome every opportunity to patiently explain their case to the disgruntled and frustrated. Now as much as at anytime in the past, the Jamaican Government needs to communicate.

Did you watch American football's Super Bowl on Sunday?
	Yes, but just for the advertisements
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