Health deaf to Alorica alarm? - Portmore mayor casts doubt over ministry's audit report ‘indicating compliance’
Published:Friday | April 17, 2020 | 12:23 AM
Romario Scott/Gleaner Writer
Lingering concerns surrounding the operations of the Alorica call centre in Portmore, St Catherine, appeared to have fallen on deaf ears as the local authorities have insisted that an alarm was raised at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling into question the judgement of health ministry technocrats.
The emerging dispute comes on the heels of 18 new coronavirus cases, bringing Jamaica's total infection numbers to 143.
Five of the new cases are males and 13 are females, ranging in age from four to 56. Some are believed to be contacts of positive Alorica workers.
Portmore Mayor Leon Thomas said yesterday that the operations of the call centre appeared to have breached best practices and that he had, in fact, brought those concerns to the attention of local health officials.
But Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie said yesterday that an instrument at the facility indicated that proper protocols were being followed.
“We are yet to determine how the infection has spread among the employees. ... The audit tool that was carried out indicates that measures were, in fact, adhered to.
“In addition to that, the ministry had put out a workplace policy with regard to COVID, and we have also looked at that, and the indications that we are seeing from the reports from the investigations of this BPO were that there was compliance,” the chief medical officer said.
Though the specifics of the protocols were not disclosed by the CMO yesterday, the assessment appears to contradict declarations by Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton that there were clear breaches at the call centre. It also differs from the the mayor's take that he had observed breaches at Alorica.
“We had concerns, based on what we had seen, the attitude of the workers … going to work without masks, coming from work without masks, and upon visiting the call centre, we identified they were not maintaining social distancing or wearing masks,” said the mayor, who witnessed dozens of Alorica workers being tested for SARS-CoV-2 on Monday.
Thomas said that the Portmore Municipal Corporation had raised concerns about Alorica on March 11 - the day after Jamaica recorded its first new coronavirus infection. He said that St Catherine's medical officer of health, Dr Francia Prosper Chen, had pledged to launch an investigation but was unaware of the status of that probe.
Calls to Prosper-Chen rang unanswered.
Alorica, however, in a statement to the media yesterday, stressed that it had taken “every necessary action” to comply with the Government's guidelines.
“It is, therefore, unfortunate that despite our best efforts, like so many other companies around the world, the robust precautionary measures we established were unable to withstand the highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 disease,” the call centre operators said.
But the Portmore mayor noted that the concerns he had raised were not only in relation to Alorica.
He told The Gleaner that he had in fact visited a number of centres within the municipalities and observed breaches.
“Myself and the chairman of the disaster coordinator visited BPOs, and we found that they are clearly in breach,” the mayor further insisted.
On one occasion, the mayor said, his team was allowed inside one of the call centres, but the operators insisted that “we could not take any photographs of anything inside”.
Yesterday, when The Gleaner contacted Grayson Hutchinson, the public health inspector for St Catherine, he refused to offer a comment, pointing to the ongoing investigations into the operations of Alorica.
Meanwhile, a government backbencher has suggested that the Ministry of Health and Wellness install public-health inspectors in the BPO firms to police new protocols in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“For large (companies) like BPOs that have hundreds of persons there, would the ministry consider having a public-health warden stationed there permanently and not just allow the establishments to follow their protocols?” queried Dr Norman Dunn, a member of the Special Select Committee on Public Health and COVID-related matters.
In his response, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said, “If we can afford to do the wardens, I will give it some thought, but it may mean doing it for several other entities, and the question is, do you have the personnel for that?”