AUDLEY Shaw, Opposition Spokesman on Finance and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, says he supports the Nurses’ Association of Jamaica’s (NAJ’s) call for higher wages for its members.

“I want to publicly support the nurses for refusing to take the second Memorandum of Understanding (MoU2),” Shaw said.

He was the guest speaker at the NAJ’s 60th Anniversary celebrations held at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) auditorium in Kingston.

Shaw told the nurses that the first MoU was fabricated for the government to fulfil its own role in maintaining a low rate of inflation.

However, he noted that in the first two years of the initial MoU, when there was an agreement to keep inflation at single digit, the out-turn was 30 per cent over the two years.

“It means that while your pay was frozen for two years, your cost of living went up by 30 per cent. It means, therefore, that in effect you were 30 per cent poorer over that period trying to make ends meet,” Shaw remarked.

Last week the nurses staged a number of demonstrations campaigning for better pay from the government. Several hospitals cancelled surgeries and offered only emergency response.

At a church service to mark the beginning of Nurses’ Week, NAJ president Edith Allwood-Anderson complained that Finance Minister Omar Davies “was not serious and committed to” better pay for nurses.

Shaw said the salaries should be improved so that the average nurse can go home feeling comfortable in her profession.

“Who can blame a trained and certified nurse in taking a respectable job offer elsewhere? No one can,” said Shaw.

“We can take this patriotic thing so far and no further, because being patriotic cannot put pot on the fire,” he added.

Shaw suggested the setting up of a national health insurance plan, noting that although there is the National Health Fund that assists citizens by subsidising the cost of prescription drugs, it was not enough.

“We need a national insurance plan that, if properly implemented, would include amenities for businesses that have a health plan for their workers, as well as a tax incentive for individuals who work out their individual insurance arrangements,” Shaw said.

He suggested too that, with this new plan, government could remove the General Consumption Tax (GCT), enabling people to sign up for the new plan.

Meanwhile, Shaw knocked what he called “top-heavy bureaucracy” in the health sector.

“There is a top-heavy bureaucracy, and it is that top-heavy bureaucracy running into hundreds and hundreds of people – too many administrators – while nurses are not getting enough money,” he remarked.

“All this money now paying these administrators could go well to pay our nurses,” he added.