…with Doctors
Back in the day, becoming a doctor – or a lawyer – was very much prized!! It pulled persons out of the drudgery and anonymity of the despised and derided lower classes into the ranks of the middle class. If you were a poor “bright” boy – or sometimes a girl – it was assumed you and your parents would do everything in your power to get you to become a “professional”. It was your ticket to being somebody. Jagan became a dentist and Burnham, a lawyer. The salary was structured to ensure the professional could maintain a lifestyle befitting his status! This was seen as being eminently fair – especially for doctors – since they literally held lives in their hands.
In the intervening years, there’s been a veritable explosion of “white collar” jobs that allow their practitioners to combine status with the good life – but medicine and law retained their cachet. Now, your Eyewitness – having never entered that rarefied fraternity – was a tad surprised to learn – via a very public and nasty spat – about the pay scales of our medical professionals. With the government expanding the medical system by building new hospitals like they’re going out of style, your Eyewitness had wondered how they’d be staffed. After all, creating doctors ain’t a matter of just waving a wand!!
They gotta complete a rigorous 5-year MBBS degree –including practical sessions on site at GPHC. Then a gruelling one-year internship rotating through at least half-a-dozen different departments to gain exposure before they can enter the lowest rung of the medical profession – a “Government Medical Officer” (GMO) in the Ministry’s hospitals or a “Resident” at GPHC. If they so choose, they can specialise by completing a three-year Master’s degree in a particular field such as, say, orthopaedics. The pay varies from about US$1200/month for interns to US$2000/month for residents!! Piddling!!
The present brouhaha exposed this when the Regional Health Officer (RHO) issued a directive compelling residents in Reg 4 to be “on call” ten days monthly – meaning work additional 4-hour shifts for 12 hours straight!! The labour law says any hours worked beyond an 8-hour day should count as overtime – with pay @time-and-a-half! But the medical profession circumvented this by specifying a flat additional US$20/ for the extra 4 hour.
Ironically, they were mirroring, but at a better rate of pay and hours, the system in place at GPHC!! There, residents got an additional US$22 for a 12-hour on-call shift on top of an initial 12-hour shift!! Working 24 hours straight, with no proper facilities – or even a canteen!!
The RHO instigated “regular folks” to “check your gross salary…and then that of a GMO (Basic is US$2000/monthly). Who deh BAD?”
Sounds like doctors “deh bad”!!
…with Mad Maduro
In case you forgot, Dear Reader, your Eyewitness had warned for years that there’s a method to Mad Maduro’s madness. After every escalation, he sets the stage for another provocation. Take his elections for a Governor and MP’s of “Guayana Essequiba” – which many discounted as having no relevance since we occupy the territory – as we’ve done for a century and a quarter. Well, the election followed his paper “annexation” and that’s now followed by an objection to our development efforts in Essequibo at an international forum!! Give the madman an inch (Argyle Agreement) and he takes a mile!!
So here our representatives were, minding what we thought was our business – discussing the topic of “Improving Physical Connectivity between Brazil and the Caribbean” – when the madman’s Vice Foreign Minister for the Caribbean to the decades-old South American initiative jumped up!! “Essequibo is ours!!”, he cried.
That’s exactly what they’d done to scuttle Burnham’s Mazaruni Hydro Project. We’ll have to fight tooth and nail so they can’t repeat the damage!!
