THE dispute between the ministries of health and finance and the island’s more that 2,000 nurses and midwives has been resolved.

According to Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), the nurses and their union representative, the National Workers Union (NWU), met with Fitz Jackson, minister of state in the ministry of finance on Tuesday, where they discussed the nurses concerns. The discussions included the secondment of the nurses to the Regional Health Authority as well as the reclassification of some categories of nurses.

“The ministry promised to work with us to ensure that we would have a smooth transition to the Regional Health Authority,” Allwood-Anderson told the Observer on Wednesday. “The ministry also said that it would review the anomalies by the first of April,” she added.

Meanwhile, the ministry of health on Monday gave the nurses an extension to the deadline for their secondment to the Regional Health Authority. This response came after the nurses gave the government until Monday 2:30 pm to clarify the matter.

“I heard from the ministry at 2:25 pm today and they have complied with our request to extend the date from January 31 to December 31,” Allwood-Anderson said on Monday.

“We now have 11 months to work with, and this gives us more time to smooth out the terms and conditions of employment of the nurses.”

Meanwhile, the nurses had given finance minister Omar Davies until Wednesday to rectify any anomalies as it relates to the reclassification of nurses. They also threatened that they would seek the intervention of Prime Minister PJ Patterson if they did not receive a response from the finance minister.

The association has been at loggerheads with the health and finance ministries over the secondment of nurses as well as the reclassification of nurses for more than two weeks.

The nurses had previously given both ministries an ultimatum, which expired last week, however the nurses claimed that they had not received a complete response to their concerns and called an extraordinary meeting last Friday, which resulted the decision to give the ministries more time to respond to their concerns.