The president of the nurses union yesterday accused Finance Minister Omar Davies of circumnavigating the issues in their wage dispute at a meeting on Friday called to settle the row that has already crippled health services at state-run hospitals.

“The minister kept us in that meeting and he kept going around in circles,” complained Edith Allwood-Anderson. Davies, she added, was “not serious and committed” to agreeing to better pay for nurses.

On Thursday, the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) called a halt to their strike after Davies and Labour Minister Horace Dalley agreed to separate meetings with them on Friday.

The nurses had been protesting since Monday to force the government to improve its wage offer of 22 per cent over two years. They have proposed, Allwood-Anderson said, a wage increase of 80 per cent in the first year and 40 per cent in the second year.

Yesterday, Allwood-Anderson told reporters at a church service observing the start of National Nurses Week that Davies had refused in Friday’s meeting to negotiate outside the terms of the second memorandum of understanding (MOU2) between the government and public sector workers.

Unlike the first two-year MOU, which expired on March 31, where the wages of public sector workers were frozen for two years in exchange for the saving of 15,000 jobs, the government is making available $15 billion for increased pay and fringe benefits in 2006/2007, and a further five per cent in increased pay in 2007/2008 under MOU2, which was signed in May.

But the nurses, who had earlier walked out of the bargaining unit formed by the umbrella Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), have refused to sign the document.

The JCTU, Allwood-Anderson had said, was making decisions on behalf of the nurses without consulting the NAJ.

“He told us that he will not disturb the MOU,” said Allwood-Anderson yesterday of Friday’s talks with Davies.

She said that if the wages cannot be improved, then their basic circumstances need to be alleviated, particularly because the nurses are burnt out due to a severe shortage of professionals.

“There is a clause in the MOU that stipulates that you can negotiate the peculiarities,” she explained.

“At the meeting we asked for $50,000 per month to take care of basic necessities,” said Allwood-Anderson. However, she said that they were told to look at other areas under the MOU concerning their wage and fringe benefits package.

She said that feedback from the NAJ had been sent to Davies and that he had promised a response by tomorrow. However, she was sceptical that he would make an acceptable offer.

“The finance minister does not want to give us anything. Nothing at all,” lamented Allwood-Anderson. “What we are trying to say is that it cannot work like that.”

She also told reporters that the NAJ had sent a letter to Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller on the issue last week Monday.