Dental surgeons protest to extract higher wages
Published:Thursday | November 2, 2023 | 12:33 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter -
FOR DR Vanessa Kiffin, president of the Jamaica Association of Public Dental Surgeons (JAPEDNS), her vibe of continuing in the local dentistry industry becomes weakened each month when she overhears her young colleagues complain about half of their salaries being used to repay student loans.
Their monthly cries, of some forking out up to $150,000 in student loan repayments from a salary of approximately $300,000, have been enough for her group to engage the Government at the bargaining table for an increase in wages.
With their last meeting held in March, the dentist believes that not much is being done to alleviate their plight as they are still being disregarded.
“Our dental auxiliaries, who we supervise and are responsible for, legally accountable for the work that they do, are being paid more than some of our dentists, and we find that to be totally unacceptable,” said Kiffin, who has been serving as a dentist in the public sector for the last six years with the Southern Regional Health Authority.
“Our dentists have to live paycheck to paycheck because the cost to become a dental surgeon is exorbitantly high globally and in Jamaica as well. The dentistry course is not subsidised by the Government of Jamaica, and it costs in tuition about $24 million, and when we are talking about the equipment, the instruments that have to be bought, we’re talking about an investment of upwards of $30 million, and our dental surgeons graduate with significant student loans,” she said.
She said the equipment that has to be purchased for training rakes up a huge portion of cost for the total tuition.
Additionally, she said the high cost for 'comfortable' housing or apartments in developed areas cannot be achieved by dental surgeons or dentists who have a net pay of approximately $150,000 per month.
In an effort to get more attention from the Government, she and Vincent Morrison, president, Union of Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE), led three protests in the Corporate Aea.
The demonstrations were geared at getting the attention of Dr Nigel Clarke, minister of finance and the public service, and Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of health and wellness, in rectifying their situation.
The protest started at 9 a.m. at the Transformation Implementation Unit — the body responsible for the Government’s compensation restructuring exercise — located along Saxthorpe Avenue in St Andrew, and continued to the Ministry of Health and Wellness in New Kingston and the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service at Heroes' Circle.
Morrison told The Gleaner during the protest that claims were previously served on the Government and meetings had been had about wage negotiations, but the dental surgeons' cries have fallen on deaf ears.
“Claims were served. We were one of the first groups that met with [the Ministry of] Finance. We met with them on the fifth of March, and since that time, we have been trying to have meetings with them, and we’re having challenges. No meeting at all,” Morrison told The Gleaner.
He said dental doctors are being classified in the same salary “bandwidth as an auxiliary”.
“A dental nurse and dental doctors are two different categories of people, and that is part of the problem,” Morrison said.
He added that another issue the group is having surrounds the whole issue of governance.
“Over years, what has been happening is that the medical doctors have been supervising the dental doctors, and we have said to Ministry of Health [and Wellness] that that sort of governance cannot continue [as] the dentistry is a specialised function. It’s a legal function, and we don’t believe that the present situation should continue,” he said.