Payday peeve
Salary delay drags on for south-central nurses; Clarke expresses regret as ministry whittles down backlog
Published:Thursday | December 22, 2022 | 1:30 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Anxiety is growing among nurses in the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA) after a second day of disappointment left them empty-handed, having not yet received salaries and arrears under the new compensation system.
Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke expressed regret about the patchy disbursement of public-sector December salaries but said Wednesday afternoon that only one of the 52 ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) was awaiting clearance for the Accountant General's Department to disburse salaries to the financial institutions.
But that is little consolation to Patsy Edwards Henry, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), who told The Gleaner late Wednesday afternoon that nurses and other health personnel in the SRHA, comprising the parishes of Manchester, Clarendon, and St Elizabeth, were disappointed with the delay.
She said that the association and its membership in the affected health region were hoping that the issue would be resolved by Wednesday night “so that we can wake up tomorrow (Thursday) with smiles on our faces”.
The NAJ head said that nurses had taken time off to do shopping, with the expectation that they would have been paid on Tuesday.
“It just destablises your entire life. You would have arranged to pay your bills and to get your little Christmas shopping done because whether we want to believe it or not, we come from a culture of Christmas and Christmas shopping. It is a part of what we do, and it has really destabilised the lives of a number of people,” she stressed.
Further, Edwards Henry said that her association was informed that nurses at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) had not been paid up to late Wednesday afternoon.
The NAJ president said that school nurses who are paid by the Government are yet to receive their increased salaries or retroactive money.
Edwards Henry said that her association had been given a plethora of reasons from the Government as to why the payment has been delayed.
“There is no one, clear-cut reason that we are getting from any of the persons, but what I do know is that everybody is asking us to hold strain, which is going to be difficult because tomorrow is Thursday.”
At a press conference hosted by the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service Wednesday, portfolio minister Dr Nigel Clarke said that the nurses had every reason to expect that both their December pay and arrears were received on time.
“To the extent that they have not been [paid], that is something that we definitely regret, and it is something that we are working assiduously and feverishly to resolve. We are happy that the delay is not significant. It should have been yesterday (Tuesday), but we are expecting it to happen today (Wednesday),” Clarke said.
Explaining the process under the new compensation system, Clarke said that the payroll officers in the MDAs calculate the arrears that are due for each employee in accordance with instructions from the Ministry of Finance.
He said that those calculations are sent to the Transformation Implementation Unit (TIU), which carries out quality control on the computed sums. Clarke said that this process has been ongoing for the past week.
He said that during the quality-control process, the cases are sent back to the MDAs for correction if errors are found.
“Once the TIU is satisfied with the calculation submitted, it is submitted to the Accountant General's Department to pay the funds over to the respective financial institutions,” he added.
Close to midday Wednesday, 47 of the 52 MDAs had been cleared by the TIU for the Accountant General's Department to disburse funds to the respective financial institutions.
Later in the afternoon, the finance minister said only one of the MDAs had not yet been cleared.
However, Clarke told journalists that 183 employees at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development would receive their salaries for December, but payment of the arrears has been delayed as its payroll system was unable to process those calculations.
After the AGD disburses the funds to financial institutions, Clarke said he expects the “banks to work expeditiously to ensure that those payments are reflected”.