Scores of striking nurses would welcome donations from “like-minded” citizens as they face severely depleted finances in the leadup to Christmas.
This, according to General Secretary of the Unity Workers’ Union (UWU), Senator Caswell Franklyn, as he investigates alleged Government interference with the finances of the healthcare workers who have been off the job for the last two weeks.
However, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Ryan Straughn has doubled down on statements from Finance Director Ian Carrington, that the Government has no ability to interact with citizens’ private finances.
Over the weekend, Barbados TODAY received a recording in which a man, apparently a customer service representative of CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank, informed a nurse that her account had been frozen. He added that a percentage of her salary had been deducted after being uploaded to her account.
Barbados TODAY understands the hold on the accounts is distinct from the salary cut which Prime Minister Mia Mottley, in accordance with the law, said would be imposed on the striking nurses.
In the two-minute back-and-forth with the bank worker, the nurse demanded to know why a hold was placed on the balance on her account to the tune of $3,926.01 on December 17, with the expiration of that hold set for December 30.
“I didn’t purchase anything for $3,926.01, so why is there a hold on my account for that amount?” the nurse is heard asking.
The customer service representative replied: “I am seeing here ‘stop salary’ and the remark is ‘GOB’ and I would think that the GOB is the Government of Barbados.”
He then advised the nurse to contact the branch for further details.
While this media house has been unable to independently verify the recording, Senator Franklyn claimed it was indeed the voice of one of his members. He believes the move was a malicious and spiteful attempt to ensure the nurses have no money for Christmas.
But according to Minister Straughn, the nurses should only see deductions for the time they were off the job, based on calculations made before their salaries were uploaded.
“There is no administrative capacity, no technical capacity, nothing at all that the Government can do to interface or interact with anybody’s bank account. We do not have the ability to do that and I don’t think that the Government has any intention of doing that,” he said.
“I’ve heard the voice notes, but if anybody understands how these things work generally, then you would recognise that people are making up stuff, saying stuff. It’s in circulation, but the Government does not have the capacity to be able to interface with anybody’s bank account.
“There is no way a financial institution would allow a third party to have access to the bank records in the bank systems. It would not make sense. It just would not make sense,” Straughn maintained.
In the meantime, however, Franklyn admitted that already some nurses were finding it difficult to make ends meet. In the absence of a strike fund, he calculated that donations totalling approximately $50,000 would assist the nurses through the period of industrial action.
He has therefore invited Barbadians who support the cause to send donations to account number 108291982001 at the Warrens branch of Republic Bank (Barbados) Limited.
“That calculation is based on the mean of the nurses pay, because I didn’t have figures for each of the nurses, so I went around the middle of the salary scale and I worked out a figure for the two weeks,” Franklyn told Barbados TODAY.
Adding insult to injury, he said, is the fact that nurses are the lowest paid public servants whose job requires them to have a four-year degree.
Democratic Labour Party (DLP) spokesman Paul Gibson reached out to this newspaper expressing concern about the situation and backed the initiative to assist them through the Yuletide season.
“They’ve put up with a lot and I would like Barbadians to step forward and volunteer. At this time of Christmas, at this time of sharing and giving, this would be a very good signal of solidarity with the nursing community of Barbados, so that the nurses can be taken care of and paid what they duly deserve,” he added. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb
