Healthcare staff experienced at least a three week delay in receiving their pay for on-call shifts in July, according to Anguilla’s senior ministerial advisor for health.
Evans McNiel Rogers said the prolonged illness of a Treasury employee was likely to have caused the administrative hold-up but added that there is “no excuse”.
“Somebody else should have been able to to put in that data and to do the necessary leg work in order for these individuals to be paid,” he stressed.
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Speaking during a government press conference on 25 August, he called the situation “disheartening” as well as a threat to morale, and said he hoped that payments would be made that day.
“It’s difficult for me as a human being and a healthcare professional,” he said, adding that while the workers may enjoy their jobs they are not working for charity.
“They have bills… They are human beings as well, and they have their needs – so I think that is something that really needs to be looked at.”
McNiel Rogers suggested the root of the problem may lie in the dissolution of the Health Authority of Anguilla and the transition of its functions to the Department of Health Services in April 2024.
“I make no bones about it that the whole idea of dismantling the health authority, creating the Department of Healthcare Services, in my opinion was a mistake and a retrograde step,” he said.
He added: “The health authority needed some adjustments – no two ways about that. [But] those adjustments were far fewer and less than what the Department of Health Services needed.
“I’ll go so far as to say it has been catastrophic in some areas,” he said, before referencing the missing on-call payments.
“There are number of other examples that I can highlight here, but again, we are committed to improving and correcting some of the things that are before us.”
McNiel Rogers said the Ministry of Health is “actively looking at” legislation governing both the statutory body as well as the Department of Health Services.
This will allow the government to “really and truly use what is productive and what has been a success” and to “carve out the necessary legislation that we need moving forward”.
