The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

PRESIDENT of the Doctors Union Dr Charles Clarke said his members will wait “a few days to see” what the Ministry of Health and the Public Hospitals Authority will offer before “moving to the next phase of their plan”.

However, Dr Clarke said he thinks the government is “not taking them seriously” but his members are “ready to do what it takes to be treated fairly”.

On Tuesday, scores of doctors demonstrated outside the Cabinet Office demanding the PHA and the Ministry of Health revisit “unfair and insulting” terms and conditions outlined in a proposal for a new industrial contract.

The physicians protested from the Critical Care Block at the Princess Margaret Hospital to the Cabinet Office downtown, where they marched around Rawson Square seven times before holding a press conference.

At the time, Dr Clarke said the doctors are “unhappy” with their salaries and overtime pay, as well as poor working conditions and no holiday pay. While Dr Clarke said the doctors are “not considering striking at this time,” if their demands are not met they “can withdraw our services in one way or the other”.

Since then, Dr Clarke said he has been contacted by Frank Carter, the government’s lead negotiator, and a representative from the PHA but nothing has been “set in stone”.

He also said he was contacted by opposition leader Dr Hubert Minnis which he said “surprised him” because when the Killarney MP was minister of health from 2002 to 2007 “he did nothing to help our cause”.

“Something is coming. Bottom line is the government has been (too slow) with giving us a decent proposal. These are skilled persons who deferred their personal gratification to become physicians and work in the Bahamas and they want to give us crumbs,” Dr Clarke said.

“We heard from Frank Carter and I think they are waiting on us to write a formal rejection of what they submitted to us and we will do that in a few days. We will continue our soft agitation in the meantime and continue to get the public’s support. We already have the support of our patients. “Something is coming, we are considering our next move, we will try to be patient. We even got a call from Dr Minnis and he asked us what he could do but he did nothing when he was the minister so we don’t have anything to talk about.”

Dr Clarke said people think doctors are rich, but that is not really the case.

“There are two classes of physicians. The consultant staff make all the money and have the big houses and their private practices, but not the house staff,” Dr Clarke said.

“The house staff is confined to practice at Princess Margaret Hospital and make a maximum of $50,000 a year for the amount of work that they do. So unless some things change the next demonstration we have will be twice as large. We will see what will happen.”

The Tribune attempted to contact representatives from the PHA and the Ministry of Health, but calls were not returned up to press time.