Minister: RHA boards to be appointed soon

BOARD members for all five regional health authorities (RHAs) are expected to be appointed soon, according to Minister in the Ministry of Health Dr Rishad Seecheran.

The minister's assurance came following concern expressed by Trinidad and Tobago National Nursing Association president Idi Stuart.

Stuart told Newsday that several issues were festering at the RHAs owing to the absence of board leadership. In particular, he said it was financial matters.

"Contracts not being renewed, a number of consumables not being purchased, increments owed, increments not being dispersed to members ...so we're seeing a number of financial difficulties being faced by the RHAs."

He added: "When you approach the CEOs and management, their response is they can't do certain things because there is no board in place. They are limited in what they can do."

For instance, he said staff within the Eastern RHA received their salaries later than usual last month, with them having been paid on June 31. He said that was especially hard for nurses who were working on 2013 salaries.

"One thing that the government must understand is that salaries is something they can ill afford to be late with, particularly for nursing personnel seeing as we work on such low salaries. There may be other groups within the health sector who could probably withstand two or three days being late but not nursing personnel."

He said the boards were critical to the functioning of the healthcare system because there were no executive managers within RHAs who could make critical decisions in the absence of upper management.

"I would assume the RHAs would have been one of the first boards to be appointed but we could understand that the Minister of Health wants to make sure they get the right people into these boards."

Dr Seecheran told Newsday he, Minister of Health Dr Lackram Bodoe, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the cabinet were finalising the board selections and placements were imminent.

"We understand that there are issues but it's also very important that we get the right people on these board positions. Some of these board positions, they have indicated we need a certain amount of persons that may be medical practitioners, we need a certain compliment of persons that have a business background and have a legal background.

"So we are in the process of vetting many persons and seeing how best we can place them and the best fit of various persons with differing expertise on the various RHA."