Nurses to finally get their money

The island's registered nurses have been promised that they will receive their more than $500 million in outstanding allowances by the end of October.

Cabinet on Monday had arrived at the final decision on the crucial proposal for the country's more than 2,000 registered nurses, who have been restive over the issue for some time.

After hours of deliberation at a meeting convened yesterday by Pearnel Charles, minister of labour and social security, NAJ president Edith Allwood-Anderson told journalists that she was grateful that, despite the global economic crisis, the nurses would receive their long-awaited allowances.

The nurses have been clamouring for the Government to pay over $1 billion in outstanding allowance since 2008. They received half of the payment last February.

Allwood-Anderson said the NAJ was committed to the agreement arrived at with the labour ministry.

"We are reasonably pleased that we have settled the allowances for October because we were looking at 2011, and our nurses would not be able to hold up to it," she said. "We have made a breakthrough and we have settled for that in the interest of the Jamaican people."

She said, however, that the nurses were anxiously awaiting the result of the next meeting scheduled for September 22, when discussions on an also overdue reclassification exercise are to continue.

- Nadisha Hunter