NURSES yesterday walked out of a meeting with the labour minister in a huff after they were told that there was no money to pay them retroactive salaries and allowances until the next financial year, which begins April 1.

Labour Minister Pearnel Charles, who described the outcome of the meeting as disastrous, told the Observer that executive members of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), led by President Edith Allwood-Anderson, stormed out of the meeting because they were upset that he rejected their demand to meet with Prime Minister Bruce Golding and Finance Minister Audley Shaw to push for the payment of monies owed to them by Government.

“I advised them that we are going to have our meeting in the second week of April when the Government will advise as to the rest of the payment in the 2010/2011 budget. She [Allwood-Anderson] said she didn’t want that and [insisted] on a meeting with Audley Shaw and the prime minister at Jamaica House,” Charles told the Observer.

“I advised her that she could not meet with the prime minister nor the finance minister. I told her that the first time she met the prime minister on Duke Street she had to write a letter of apology to him because of her behaviour and she got vexed and walked out,” said Charles.

Allwood-Anderson, who has been leading the crusade for the implementation of a job reclassification for registered nurses as well as the payment of retroactive monies, was not available last night for comment on yesterday’s meeting.

Registered nurses who were granted a 15 per cent salary increase, retroactive to 2008, are owed approximately $860 million by the Government, which had agreed to pay $43O million during this financial year, which ends March 31. A payment of $270 million has so far been made and the remainder was scheduled to be paid by March 31.

But the Government, faced with a shortfall in revenues, said it cannot now make the second payment by March 31.

Yesterday, Charles insisted that the Government intends to pay the nurses but is constrained by the country’s economic circumstances. “It is not like the Government of Jamaica don’t want to pay the nurses, we have budgetary constraints,” Charles told the Observer.

Just last week, the labour minister had to apply to the court for a 14-day injunction barring the nurses from taking further industrial action over the non-implementation of the job reclassification.

Nurses had started a sick-out as part of their push for the reclassification to be implemented, which would see a further rise in salaries for registered nurses.