Allwood-Anderson

Normality has been restored to the island's health facilities after days of absenteeism from nurses.

However, the nurses have remained displeased with the Government about actions taken regarding a reclassification exercise.

At a meeting convened at the Ministry of Finance yesterday to discuss the way forward regarding the reclassification exercise for health-sector workers, it was announced that the technical work of allotting each health-sector job into a classification category is ongoing and will be completed by December 18.

Nurses still worried

But the nurses are perturbed by the decision to include them in the reclassification with other health groups.

The president of the Nurses' Association of Jamaica (NAJ), Edith Allwood-Anderson, said though the ministry is looking at all the groups, the NAJ was the only body that had an implementation date for July 2007.

The nurses walked out of the meeting half-hour before it came to an end after several confrontations with a number of representatives at the meeting.

Go-ahead from naj

Despite that fact, state minister in the Ministry of Finance, Senator Arthur Williams, said all the health-sector groups present at the meeting agreed that the process was a health-sector job evaluation and reclassi-fication exercise and not a process for any one group.

He said the date set for December couldn't have been earlier.

In the meantime, Allwood-Anderson told The Gleaner minutes after an emergency meeting of nurses at the NAJ office yesterday that the nurses had mandated him to proceed with negotiations.

"We have not yet been called by the ministry to negotiate and so we will be asking for a date for next week," she said.

nadisha.hunter@gleanerjm.com