The Guyana Public Service Union has hammered the Government over its move to greenlight the recruitment of some five hundred nurses from Bangladesh, while local nurses continue to complain about low wages and poor working conditions.

Addressing a press conference yesterday, GPSU President, Patrick Yarde, said the government continues to show contempt for public servants in general, but nurses in particular. The GPSU is the representative for nurses in the public sector.

“This is gross eye pass to Guyanese, it is cross eye pass, it is insulting and only to my mind reinforce the view that I have that this government feels that the workers of Guyana are they property and that they own them and can anything they like, but this eye pass has got to stop,” Yarde declared.

Last week the Government confirmed that it has granted approval to a private company to recruit 500 healthcare workers from Bangladesh to fill local gaps.

There have been mounting concerns about the shortage of Nurses at several public hospitals throughout the country, as many nurses continue to leave Guyana to take up more lucrative jobs abroad.

The GPSU President said his union had submitted a menu of measures to the President on how to address some of the challenges facing local Nurses. He said those recommendations were ignored and the government went ahead and made some changes in the salary structure for some categories of Health Care workers and created more problems in the system. 

“Since President Ali issued those increases, check and see it had an acceleration of nurses leaving this country. This is why we have to resort to this because of stupidity and this naive and backward approach for a government that claims to have working class credential, trying to undermine the trade union and do things that the trade union is not involved in,” Yarde stated.

According to Mr. Yarde, some of the concessions that are being offered to the Bangladeshi nurses could be extended to local nurses to boost their morale.

“The offers they are making to the nurses that they could bring in the country, pay tax free, pay them more than the local nurses and a variety of different things, clearly you could see the double standards that they are displaying,” the GPSU President noted.

Nurses in the public healthcare system have been pleading for improved salaries and working conditions over the past several years.

Related posts:

Opposition lashes out at Government over decision to alllow recruitment of 500 nurses from Bangladesh GPSU assails Government over “insensitive” treatment of public servants Better bonus package should have been offered to frontline workers and other public servants -says GPSU GPSU now the official union for GRA workers