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Mouth Open
June 14, 2000
Sir/Madam,
Well, well, another Minister has come out in support of the nurses’ struggle! Or is that really so?
The Minister of Finance today made some important revelations in respect of the privatisation of the health service, being carried out under the sobrique of decentralisation and directed by the Inter-American Development Bank scripted in the agreement for a loan to fund this process.
As we say: “Mouth Open, Torry Jump Out!. For the first time, a UNC Minister has admitted that a conditionality of that loan is that government must get all health workers out of their public service employment and into the RHAs. (Exactly what another “supporter” Mr. Manning said the other morning in a television interview).
For more than half a decade these workers have staunchly refused to give up the quality of employment they now enjoy in the public service. That has been most effective resistance against the so-called transformation (which is really a buzz-word for privatisation) of the health service.
The Government has been content to pay what Mr Kuei Tung called a “holding fee” of millions of dollars for the past 5 years to try and hold on to that loan money. Rather than spend that money on providing the much-needed drugs and equipment and improved working conditions necessary to satisfy the people’s right to health care.
So the Finance Minister’s statement is really an admission that his government has not really been concerned about resolving this current crisis by satisfying the demands of the health workers. He is not supporting the workers so much as saying to his government: “Hey, let’s not lose focus here! We have to get our hands on that IADB money!”.
That is why the government maintains its ridiculous position that in order to have an allowance introduced, or any improvement in their working conditions, the health workers must agree to leave the public service.
The UNC is not singular in this madness. Just about a year ago in Brazil, where a similar IADB loan is in place for health care privatisation, the government harassed and arbitrarily transferred health workers into the new health services. One state government, in response to the workers’ opposition to their arbitrariness refused to pass on union dues deducted from workers’ pay, in an attempt to blackmail the workers an their union to give up their resistance.
Here, the UNC dug directly into the workers’ salaries and is taking one action after another to have the union spend large sums on legal battles in the courts. Different strokes but same aim – Break them at all costs.
The government has to recalculate several things:
· the cost of satisfying the demands of the workers vs the cost to the population being denied health care as a result of their refusal
· the cost of wasteful payments to the IADB vs the cost of refusing to meet the workers’ demands
· the cost of attempting to force the health workers out of the public service vs the cost of taking a different approach to health care provision.
They have, in the past, calculated that one option to force the workers out is by making all the posts in the Ministry of Health redundant (as they did in privatising the post office) and having to pay every health worker an immediate enhanced pension. The difference between the post office and health is that they would have to re-hire almost every single health worker and pay them a salary in the RHAs too.
They decided it would be better to pay the IADB millions of dollars to hold the funds while they try to force health workers out of the public service.
That is what all these 3 months have been really about. Government trying to satisfy the demands of the moneylenders at the expense of the right of the people to health care.
Mr Kuei Tung is making a plea to his government to keep the objective of getting the rest of the loan in focus and find a kinder, gentler way to force the workers out (a human face).
The health workers must not be misled by his new found concern. After all, didn’t the PM also say that he supported their struggle only some weeks ago.
The people of Trinidad and Tobago must learn from this whole episode that their right to health care finds no real place in the concerns of the government. Their objective is to satisfy the demands of finance capital, plain and simple.
The real struggle here is for the people to demand that this right be guaranteed.
HOMEPAGE
Copyright © Clyde Weatherhead
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