BELIZE, Mon. Aug. 29, 2022
Nurses from regional hospitals nationwide today staged protests to highlight the ongoing difficulties facing those in the profession—the most recent being the shortfall in overtime payments and other forms of compensation that are due to them. The demonstrations started on Saturday with the nurses of the Southern Regional Hospital, who staged a walkout and gathered on the pedestrian ramp in Dangriga, thus blocking the road.
In addition to raising their voices against circumstances which have for a long time been making their working conditions particularly difficult—such as shortages of staff, medication, and supplies—the nurses are now also highlighting the inadequate compensation they are receiving, and are pointing to the fact that although overtime is an absolute necessity to keep the hospital running, many healthcare workers are not receiving remuneration for those extra hours.
One nurse from the Western Regional Hospital said, “Every month our overtime is being cut, we are being told that we are owing hours, nurses can’t understand how we are owing hours when almost every week we are working 48 hours per week, and our regular hours is 40 hours, so if we are working 48 hours times 4 weeks, how could we be owing hours? And whenever the overtime comes in it is always short. We are not being paid in full what we are working for and we are tired of this.”
She said that sometimes, nurses have to pool their funds together to buy water for the ward when it runs out, and at times, the one meal provided by the hospital is not available.
“Sometimes the cook will tell you the food is finished, so if you don’t have money to buy your food, then sorry you are on your own,” that nurse mentioned.
A nurse from the Southern Regional Hospital posted on social media, “This last salary is a real spit in the face for us nurses … I just hope they’re ready when my young nurses become active … just wait.” She added, “imagine how us healthcare workers feel right now. Demotivated and this stops here …”
This morning, some nurses from the Northern Regional Hospital also took to the street. During an interview with one of those healthcare workers, we learned that a meeting was being held with officials of the government of Belize and reps of the Nurses Association of Belize. She shared their reason for stepping out with the rest of the nation’s nurses. “We are in solidarity because we have had enough with everything that has been going on in the health system. We have been frustrated, we have been unhappy, we lack resources, we lack medication, we lack staffing, and now they’re touching our money, so now enough is enough,” she said.
The president of the Belize Nurses Association, Renetta Pop, said that the pressing issue at hand is a salary deduction that nurses are currently experiencing with each paycheck. She sat down with government officials from the Ministry of Finance, Health, and Labor this morning as a part of a meeting to hash out the issues.
“There are some agreements that we came up to. The Ministry of Health will be doing a press release, there also will be consulting back with our membership,” Pop said. She went on to thank the nurses from the public and private sector who are standing in solidarity.
The Belize Medical and Dental Association issued a press release today indicating a stance of solidarity with the nurses of Southern Regional Hospital, who as mentioned, were the first to take to the street on Saturday.
It further noted that it stands with “ALL healthcare workers facing hardship in the workplace at this time.”
“While we advocate for adherence to essential services guideline, we understand the sentiments of the nurses and staff at the SRH. We, therefore, implore the management of all government facilities, the executives at the MOHW and members of the Labor Department to initiate meaningful dialog,” the release from the BMDA goes on to state.
Today, following the meeting, Minister Bernard, in an interview this afternoon said that he had met with the Nurses Association just recently, about 3 weeks ago. “One of them being the main issue is the issue of the overtime, and the deductions were made – what they term in the Ministry of Finance as a short-hour deduction, it was our hope that we would have awaited that meeting for today before any action was taken.”
He shared that it was important for the government and the aggrieved healthcare workers to have had the meeting that took place today.
Addressing the elephant in the room, the issue of overtime calculations for nurses, he stated, “The overtime calculations will be calculated on a monthly basis as opposed to every week or every day where nurses and doctors and all shift workers.” He went on to say, “We have agreed with the Ministry of Finance, that that calculation will revert to where it was calculated monthly so that not to affect a nurse who works on a shift basis where they would be deducted hours if they did not complete the weekly amount.”
He noted that, for the past pay period for the August 2022 payroll, a short-hour deduction was applied to the salary of nurses.
“That immediately sent shock waves, as I would put it, across the medical profession, and I don’t give nurses or the doctors, or any of these frontline shift workers – who as I said in that meeting with the Ministry of Finance – are feeling it in their pockets. How can you expect these persons’ basic salary to be deducted and expect that they will survive for the rest of the month,” Minister Bernard said.
He shared that his position, along with the Nurses Association of Belize, was to have that decision reverted back immediately.
A joint press release issued by the Ministry of Health and Wellness specifically outlines some of the actions that are to be taken. These include an adjustment in the method used to calculate overtime pay for the nurses, which will now be done on a monthly rather than a weekly basis—using a time sheet that will list monthly hours worked and monthly overtime hours worked. Additionally, the “short-hour reductions” referred to by Minister Bernard , which were made for the August 2022 pay period will be “reverted back to staff” as an “interest-free advance” by
September 9. The Health Ministry has also promised to carry out reconciliation during the next pay period to resolve any “discrepancies” that resulted from the previous method of calculation that was being used. Additionally, the tool “for the calculation of sick leave and vacation leave” will be standardized countrywide, and a request has reportedly been made for “review and amendment of the PSR and GWR to reflect regulations for shift workers.”
This afternoon at 3:00 o’clock, healthcare workers from the national referral hospital, Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital Authority, staged a walkout in solidarity with their colleagues countrywide. President of the KHMHAU, Andrew Baird, gave comments while picketing in his scrubs in front of the hospital.
He said that the agreement reached this morning addresses only issues of overtime and sick leave benefits.
“I am aware of the agreement, but the agreement is only one-fold. It addresses their overtime issue, but it still has not addressed the issue of shortage of supplies, human resources, and medication. It did not address the issue of better wages,” Baird said.
The CEO of the KHMH, Chandra Cansino, also gave an interview this evening, during which she said, “I was a little surprised when, you know, I got an information that in five minutes time we are going to stage a protest, and so my initial concerns were for the patients.”
She added, “We have come a long way with our relationship with the union, so I do not interpret this as a protest against the KHMHA. I interpret this as the KHMHAWU in solidarity with their fellow nurses. “
A shortage of workers in the nursing profession has been long recorded in Belize, and in many countries around the world, with the World Health Organization estimating a shortage of 5.9 million nurses worldwide. Because of this, many countries offer very attractive working packages to persuade trained nurses to migrate to those nations.