Nurses Express Outrage Over Pay Disparities Amid Salary Increases for Health Inspectors

In a brief interlude from today’s house debate, we bring you a story where several workers in the health sector are upset over salaries.  In a letter sent to us along with an internal government memo, several nurses have expressed upset over a recent increase in salary for public health inspectors.  The nurses indicate that the years of education that they have to endure to become qualified is by far much more than that of a health inspector.  Commenting on the issue was Minister of Public Service, Henry Charles Usher.  

Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service: “I think the Minister of Health went into some detail in terms of explaining that the posts themselves call for higher academic qualifications, some with experience, etc. So the justification was made by the Minister of Health to raise the pay scale for these particular officers. Now the approach we have taken is to look at the entire public service comprehensively, the way compensation is done, the way allowances are done. All of that is being done through a project in partnership with the IDB and it’s something that will really look at every single pay scale, try to minimize the number of pay scales. Currently we have 27 or so pay scales and 30 points on those pay scales. That’s way too much to manage. And so it’s really necessary to try to make it more efficient and part of it is to make sure that the classification of the jobs are in line with what is being paid in the private sector. We have to make sure that we keep the best of the best in the public service. How do we do that? By compensating them properly. This particular one was something that the Ministry of Health felt was necessary to keep their workers there, and they made a presentation to Cabinet, they made a presentation to the Ministry of Finance, and so the Ministry of Public Service carried out a recommendation and approval from the Cabinet. But my objective has always been to look at everything comprehensively and to make sure that we properly compensate all of our public officers.”

The increase was also due to a re-designation from Evaluators to Vector Control Officers – Grade Two.  The salary scale went from level four to level fourteen.  Love News understands that the increase for public health inspectors was determined months before the government began to streamline salaries in the public service.