By Elesha George
After an intense two-and-a-half years on the frontline, qualifying nurses during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and working to combat nursing shortages on the island, members of the Nursing Council have become frustrated after not being paid their allowances for more than thirty months.
“The members of the Council are outraged, we feel very disrespected, we feel that our service has been disregarded, and is being looked at as being not important,” one member told Observer.
The statutory body is the regulator for the nursing practice on the island, ensuring that nurses take oral and written exams that will qualify them to operate as licensed practitioners within Antigua and Barbuda, as well as routinely testing their competency to deliver quality care to patients.
The seven-member Council however has been owed monies for almost half of 2019, and were last paid for three months in 2020 – January, February and March. The monies owed are paid monthly as a stipend for the work that the board does in preparing the licences of nurses. Collectively, the monies owed amount to approximately $105,000.
One member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the Council didn’t think it was “appropriate” to request those monies from the government during the pandemic, given the financial situation. However, they expected that by now, in the last quarter of 2022, that efforts would have been made to pay them.
Nurse Margaret Smith, chair of the Nurses Council acknowledged that monies were owed for several months, when contacted by Observer. She however stopped short of giving more details.
Observer understands that other statutory boards like the Medical and Pharmacy councils have been paid some monies owed for 2019, although they are still owed for 2021 and 2022.
Observer was unable to reach Dr. Vonetta George, chairperson on the Medical Council on the weekend, however Michael Joseph, president of the Pharmacy Council confirmed to Observer that both the Pharmacy Council and the Medical Council are owed stipends.
No official communication has been sent by the government regarding payment, leaving the members of the Nursing Council to only assume possible cash flow problems, although one person remarked, “If it is that there is [poor]availability of funds in the treasury, why is it that all Councils are not treated in a similar manner; why is it that the Nursing Council would have been so far behind compared to the other boards?”
The member said that earlier this year they made both the permanent secretary and the minister of health aware of the situation, but they have since then only been paid for a mere one-month towards July 2020.
The role of the Nursing Council is to monitor and evaluate programme implementation; conduct evaluation of nursing schools; provide validation of nursing credentials; maintain a register of nurses in both the private and public sector; and administer four exams per year for nurses to get their licences – a written exam is due in October.