Caddle questions unemployment rate

A Government backbencher is questioning whether the seven per cent unemployment rate is a true reflection of the state of joblessness in Barbados.
Posing questions to the management of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) on its staffing issues as the Estimates debate continued on Wednesday, former Minister of Economic Affairs Marsha Caddle contended that with more people working part-time, that rate may not be accurate.
“When we measure employment in this country and we say we are at seven per cent unemployment, often we are counting people that aren’t always working. We are calling them employed and they’re not employed because they are otherwise dependent on the social services of government,” she said.
Caddle made the comments after the QEH’s Chief Executive Officer Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland said that fewer people have been filling the medical facility’s permanent posts.
“What has been happening over the years as an institution, the approach has been taken not to fill all of the vacancies in the established posts, and instead rotate persons in a limited amount of vacancies,” she explained.
Admitting that the staffing problems had been an issue throughout the course of the hospital’s existence, the CEO called the current situation “sub-optimal”.
“What it does is create uncertainty, instability. It is not really an ideal form of work and, essentially, because of the culture of the institution, when a person gets one of those relieving posts, they could be in those posts for a number of years and they’re not able to qualify for appointments because they’re not working consistently and steadily as would happen in other areas,” Bynoe-Sutherland said from the well of Parliament.
To correct this, she said a policy decision has to be made at the level of the hospital’s board on how to satisfy staffing needs.
However, she said that would not be a simple task.
“We could make a decision as an institution that we’re going to fill the vacancies but that, in effect, would remove a category of staffing of persons who are now relieving and the number of persons who are relieving over time essentially has grown.
“I actually have done an informal poll of persons who work in that category . . . asking ‘would you prefer us to fill those five vacancies and or would you prefer to work?’ Many of them have said to me because it’s really become part of our organisational culture, they fear that they won’t be one of those five who are selected, but in this scenario, they’re working, they’ll get called maybe six or seven months out of the year,” the CEO stated.
(JB)