The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

JUNIOR doctors have not yet been given their promised $1,400 lump sum, Health Minister Dr Duane Sands said yesterday.

"This is all about the movement of cash back and forth and the issues of messaging between finance (officials) and PHA (Public Hospitals Authority) and the conventional rules of public service," he said.

"What has happened is a pronouncement was made that certain people would be getting $1,400.

"In the first instance, the funding was not forwarded to PHA in time to make the original pay sheet. We would have said non-consulting doctors and nurses would get the $1,400. The nursing union and the doctors' union would've been given a written assurance of this but as you know the money doesn't arrive from Public Hospitals Authority or the Ministry of Health, it comes from (Ministry of) Finance. They've had to go back and forth in terms of what the dollar amount is that should be transferred to meet the needs to pay all these staff members. To date, finance says they have gotten the money but PHA says they don't believe they've gotten it."

Doctors and some of the nurses who haven't received the lump sum will get it "tomorrow, next week, as soon as it's resolved," Dr Sands said.

"Most of the eligible nurses got it already," he added. "All eligible will get it even though we will have to make another pass at interpretation issues because some persons got it pro-rated. People that had just started work would have gotten a pro-rated amount and that was not our intention."

Some junior doctors are sceptical they will receive the money.

Dr Macumba Miller, the immediate past-president of the Bahamas Doctors Union, said communication between BDU and PHA "is at an all time low".

"It seems that PHA is of the thought process that we should go to court on every issue," he said yesterday.

Financial Secretary Marlon Johnson declined to give a timeline yesterday on when doctors will receive the payments. He said discussions are ongoing between the Ministry of Finance and health officials but he expects the matter will be sorted out from his end within the next day or so. He declined to say how much overall is owed to the doctors.

Last month, Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced government employees would receive a lump sum payment at the end of the December.

"What I can say at this particular point in time is that those in the public service, that is immigration, customs, police, defence force, teachers, PHA, doctors and nurses, they would receive a lump sum payment in their pay cheque the end of this month -- $1,400," he said at the time.