The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Nurses Union President Amancha Williams said there were some issues during the union’s election last week as a result the group is hoping for another vote.

Nurses went to the polls on Thursday to vote for new leadership within the union.

When contacted on Friday, Ms Williams said the process had some challenges.

Asked about the unofficial results, she said: “You can call the registrar and ask him — he has everything. So you can call him because we (are) still hoping that certain things will be, we’ll have another election.”

The labour registrar could not speak on the record when contacted for comment.

However, Ms Williams said there were some concerns and was candid about how they felt the election was managed.

“We’ve had persons who are not nurses, which will compromise the integrity of the ballot, sitting in the actual voting area. So all of that, we don’t know,” she said.

“Then we’ve had counts off, so we heard from the Family Islands that they were at a disadvantage, because we never got to vote, various islands.

“We stopped the election for an hour because the ballot was not correct. The Bahamas Nurses Union had several meetings with the registrar in reference to that.

“Firstly, he sent a draft to us. Him, myself and the others along with other persons from the Labour Department were within the meeting and we asked him to see the ballots when they were just produced.

“We were at a disadvantage. The ballots didn’t have symbols - the ballots only had names. Most of our people only voted by grouping – wasn’t (legible) to see, it was very small. We got a number of concerns and we just didn’t appreciate how it was managed and carried out.”