Cashless

Another former hospital nurse, whose pension was abruptly slashed then restored owing to invalidity, has emerged to dispute that Government has made good on its promises to return her benefits to normal levels.

DeCarla Alleyne, 38, a former orthopaedic nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), was declared medically unfit in December 2018 after battling with the health care institution for at least two years following an injury to her foot.

She told Barbados TODAY: “I am still a young woman with my life ahead of me and a family to support.

“All I am asking is for the Government to pay me what they owe me, or try to reorganise how they calculate pensions so that if you are only down to one pension, you can still pay your bills and feed your family.”

Alleyne, who worked at the hospital for 12 years, recounted how her dilemma began: “In 2016, I got into an accident in which I broke my foot. The hospital sent me on three weeks’ sick leave without properly examining my foot, so the injury worsened as a result.

“After that, I ended up on leave for 18 months, but no-one told me how that would affect my financial wellbeing in the long run.”

Initially, Alleyne was on half-pay leave, but unknown to her, after 12 months, it became no-pay leave.

She said she learned this in embarrassing fashion, which resulted eventually in her having to give up the land she had owned.

She said: “I went to pay my light bill at SurePay, and when I swiped my bank card, there was a zero balance on the account.

“I went to the hospital’s Accounts Department to ask a question, and they then told me, ‘Don’t you know your payments stop after a year?’

“No one had told me that before. I also discovered that at one time they were paying in all the money to the bank and I was not getting anything in my hands.

“When the payments stopped altogether, the bank foreclosed on the land.”

Alleyne said she sought legal representation and eventually the hospital reinstated her pay so she could receive two-thirds of her salary.

Her family also faced other challenges during that period. The farm her husband run lost all its crops during a flood at the end of 2017. Then her daughter fell ill and needed urgent medical attention, which she had to seek from a private doctor.

She received a grant from her credit union just before she left the QEH, and friends, relatives and church members also “chipped in” to help her family stay afloat financially.

She said: “When I was working, I earned $3,300 a month, then that went down to $1,185, then most recently between $1,230 and $1,240.”

Alleyne said she has to receive bariatric surgery in a bid to reduce the weight on her knee, but to her mind, her injury was not serious enough for her to be retired from the service.

She said was quite willing to be reassigned to another department that would put less strain on her, noting that “there was a nurse in the Accident and Emergency Department who was walking with a cane, and I know of other nurses who had cancer and kept on working right up until they died”.

She told Barbados TODAY: “I called the Health Minister, and he said he would get the head of the doctors to look into my situation. I then spoke to Dr Joy St. John (whom she described as ‘very understanding’) and following that I met with the Medical Board for the first time, who gave me the all-clear to return to work, and use a cane if necessary.

“Instead, the QEH assigned me to the Orthopedic Ward, one of the hardest wards in the hospital, and after two days the Ward Sister (nurse in charge) told me to go home because she recognised it would be too strenuous for me.

“The orthopaedic doctor then sent me on sick leave, and after that, I went to another meeting with the medical board, and, after no kind of examination, they declared me medically unfit.

“In my view, the board did not do its job properly, because in making its decision they did not do any X-rays, MRIs or other examinations to prove the extent of the injury.”

She said her colleagues had pleaded on her behalf. She accused the hospital of misplacing her case files.

She declared: “There were three volumes, yet on one of my last visits to the hospital, only the first volume, the earliest one with no record of the injuries I had sustained, was available.”

Ever since leaving the public service last December, her financial situation has grown worse, Alleyne explained.

She told Barbados TODAY: “I am receiving $900 from the National Insurance Scheme as a pension, but nothing from the Treasury.

“In May this year, I received my gratuity and the first month’s pension from the Treasury Department, while the disability benefit from the NIS came from March this year.

“I received these payments for two months, and then a letter came in during the third month, stating that I was only entitled to one pension since I started work after September 1, 1975.

“My question is, why didn’t the NIS, Treasury or the hospital tell me about this from the very start?

“If I had known that, I would have gone into the bank to refinance my mortgage on the reduced income.”

The letter referred to the Pensions (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1975-31, which says that civil servants who entered the workforce after September 1, 1975 and who qualify for pension are subject to abatement of pension. Under the law, if a person is eligible for both a National Insurance and Government pension, the higher of the two will be
provided.

In terms of an officer who has been invalided out of the service, the legislation states: “The individual must have a minimum of ten years in service but less than 20 years.

“The pension will be calculated at twenty years of service but it cannot exceed the amount worked for before retiring medically unfit.

“If a person is the victim of an employment injury (that is, got hurt while on the job) they are eligible for an additional 1/6 of the pension.”

An emotional Alleyne said: “This single pension has worsened our situation because our house rent is $1,150, and the farm is not earning any money at present because of the current drought conditions, so my husband is trying his best at gardening and other odd jobs to keep us going.

“I accept that the land is gone, but just let me pay my rent, buy food, look after my child and see a doctor.

“All I want these people to do is give me what is due to me, and then I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my life after that.”

Barbados TODAY has reached out to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for comment.