The recruitment of Vincentians nurses to work in the United Kingdom will commence soon, Prime Minster Ralph Gonsalves announced in his Independence Address on Saturday.
“… shortly, recruitment will begin from our surplus of nurses which we are training to go to the United Kingdom and that process will start very soon,” he told the military parade at Victoria Park to mark the 39th anniversary of independence from Britain.
Gonsalves further announced that for students now pursuing the four-year bachelor’s degree in nursing, the government will pay one-third of the already subsidised fees.
This is in addition to providing them a monthly stipend of EC$1,000 as is done with the registered nurses and degree programmes.
“Clearly, the people know and the nurses know and we all know that this government loves the nurses,” he said.
He further said that supporting loans are available from the Economically Disadvantaged Student Loan programme.
In further comments on education, the prime minister said his government has made 48 awards — the highest ever — available to students who sat the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations and associate degrees in 2018.
“These are 17 national scholarships, 11 national exhibitions and bursaries; this package amounts to approximately 7.1 million dollars. This is a huge investment in the 48 outstanding students in the 2018 examinations.”
Additionally, the government pays students’ economic cost annually to the University of the West Indies or a similar sum to other universities “so that the total package becomes over 10 million dollars,” Gonsalves said.
That what we are investing in, just this batch of young people,” Gonsalves said, adding that several million more is spent on education of other students, other scholarships, tuition grants, and other forms of assistance, including student loans.
He said that the government was on target for one university graduate per household in SVG by 2030.
The prime minister said that his government is determined to bolster further the assistance granted to its employees who are pursuing undergraduate studies at the degree, diploma, and certificate level in approved priority subject areas at accredited institutions online, the Community College, or the open campus of the University of the West Indies.
He said this assistance would amount to up to one half of each course that is successfully completed.
Are the nurses and the government aware of what the present Prime Minister and her government have done to “the Windrush generations” of people that went to Britain from the 1950’s to work in the coal mines, driving the buses, working in trains and transportation and working in healthcare and in hospitals and working in sanitation/
Maybe this government should take heed and check out the systemic bigotry and racial attitudes that is happening to this date in Britain up to today. People from the Caribbean had to endure and still are enduring much stereotyping, systemic racism and bigotry from the British culture, We never heard much about the racism and bigotry until it was made available when they started deporting our Caribbean people as they were using illegal and wicked means to deny them of healthcare services, their pensions and other benefits and as a result many were left destitute. Many lost all of their possession and many were deported or still in fear of being deported. Caribbean people were treated very poorly by those snobbish British. Up to now they are deporting or have lists of people to be deported who entered Britain with British passports just like the ones that the British use and who thought that they were British citizens as such wiil have the rights and privileges like those born in Britain were entitled to, These people from the Caribbean were denied the equal rights and were denied their pensions, some, especially Jamaicans were deported after being in Britain for over 50 – 60 years. Britain is advertising and playing on the kindness and sympathy and the need for employment from its Caribbean peoples to help them because they are in need. Let them do their own dirty jobs. They do not need our people to be in their servitude. Just saying!!
Many, especially, the older generation who went then did not have date of entry papers. What was appalling is that the Home Office deliberately destroyed the records or papers of the Windrush generations that they had so they could deny these people of ther pensions and their health benefits. They had become automatically persona non-Grata in the eyes of the British without visible papers and were made destitute after serving the British public never mind their poor treatment.
This gave Britain and the excuse and the greed was to deny them their right to pensions. They lost homes, jobs, money in the banks and their subsequent investments were and still remain frozen and there are Vincentians and nurses too who are still suffering from loss of healthcare too. Britain needs to have their own people take care of their love ones. Their bigoted stance and aggression against people of color from the Commonwealth need not be tolerated anymore. This kind of white privilege that they have used against people of color needs to be disclosed so that care is being taken when you expose our people to this cruel and unusual treatment without getting guarantees that this would not be tolerated and allowed to happen to another generation of West Indians. They are opening their arms because they indeed need people to care for their sick, disadvantaged and infirm, but do not let them fool you because these are the same ones who think that slavery never existed and that to them we are just another generation of paid slaves.
UK Nurses pay
Fully qualified nurses start on salaries of £22,128 rising to £28,746 on Band 5 of the NHS Agenda for Change Pay Rates. Salaries in London attract a high-cost area supplement. With experience, in positions such as nurse team leader on Band 6,salaries progress to £26,565 to £35,577.
US Nurses pay
The average Registered Nurse Salary the median salary for a registered nurse was $68,450 in 2016. The best-paid 10 percent of RNs made more than $102,990.
You see the problem with falling out with the US? look at the pay difference.
How many of our nurses can work in the ALBA countries? None at all.
Cuba Nurses pay
Cuba, typical doctor’s salary: about $60 a month whilst a nurses is about $40 a month. Those are top rates the majority earn even less.
Venezuela nurses pay
Venezuela, In Venezuela, a nurse doesn’t earn more than Bs. 5,000,000, less than $2 a month.18 Jul 2018
Really, and the comrade wants us to be like these countries whilst shunning what is really best for the people, which is to dump ALBA and all those nasty anti worker countries.
Does the British National Health Service know that Ralph wants to dump the Queen and distance ourselves from Britain because they were once a colonial power.
I agree with all your comments except the last sentence which is irrelevant. Stick to your knitting, Peter, and stop always spoiling good research with gratuitous political propaganda.
Your comment is better that the actual article (It relates everything that is missing from the article) which reds like another endorsement (not compliment) of Mr. Gonsalves.
England is Colonial Country and please do forget.
One word Dear Leader and just five days after your INDEPENDENT DAY great speech at Victoria Park about Colonial names and master.
Can please tell us more about England and it history in Caribbean.
Are we seeing a divided personally leader here? What people must think , or you thinking that we are so gullible not to look at your controdictions.
We can not survive without the Colonial power.
Barrels that you mentioned at your mantra speaches majority is coming from colonial countries.
Western Union and money Gran our families uses lies in colonial hands that they work and send money home to build our econmy.
Many of our learned lawyers school and sit under colonial educator.
Are going to burn their Diplomas and Certificate?
Now I hear sending nures to England which was condemn by our National and Social leaders who travelled to Countries for medical .
Power in our faces and go with wind in all directions to satisfy polical expidency.
Is election wind blowing and any port for the storm? Fork Tongue it is called.
Nice, nice, sir.
Right! A Spade is a called Spade. The fact is that Gonsalves doesn’t know the first thing about economics.
As I have repeatedly said, producing “surplus” nurses directly subsidizes the rich societies to which they migrate which saves at least $EC 200,000 for each foreign-trained nurse they would have had to train themselves plus pay for their schooling from an early age . We end up getting the crumbs: namely, remittances from these migrant nurses to their families back home, if that.
In short, we pay for the education of these nurses from day care centre to adulthood and lose them at the a time they could add value to our economy by being employed in a private sector nursing home or elsewhere. Meanwhile our neighbour, Barbados, is working hard to reduce the nurse brain drain from the country (https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/10/23/barbados-government-working-to-limit-nursing-brain-drain/).
The same can be said for the other subsidized students most of whom will be forced to leave home for greener pastures when they graduate.
Just more examples that our society has very little potential for economic development.
Let me first say that it is a good thing, that as workers, our nurses may be able to find paid employment in the U.K., for as we know their future prospect in SVG is rather quite bleak. But dear one say, has the Prime Minister given thought to those nurses who may prefer to be employed closer to their friends and family, especially those nurses who may be looking out for their frail relatives or those with newly formed love relationships?
Is not this boastful declaration by Ralph Gonsalves, that the U.K may be inclined to hire our trained nurses, an admission by him, of his utter ineptitude in running our economy and his totally failed economic policy when it comes to jobs creation here at home? How inept it is indeed that we as a state have to look to another far away country for our job creation!
First he continually berates the United Kingdom for our past, then he begs them to please give our citizens their health service work. Surely should we not be the health service users that are the ones who should be benefiting from these nursing skills, nursing skills gained by our tax trained nurses. Should we not be the ones employing our value trained nurses? And goodness knows we most certainly need them here!
In this economic scenario that is being put before us here by Ralph Gonsalves, we as a state are most definitely the losers in this transaction. For although our citizens may be gaining employment (and this is a good for them) we as a state are most definitely the losers and the UK for its part, mainly the gainer. Why so? It is so because with our limited over taxed resources, we would have trained these nursing individuals and all to the UK’s benefit.
Nevertheless, and there again as we have observed, the Ralph Gonsalves family and cronies have long proved themselves to be utterly, utterly useless when it comes to economics!
Many good points. This is an issue that any thoughtful and patriotic Vincentian can and should agree on.
I wrote about duncemanship
https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/07/12/when-financial-dunces-in-the-caribbean-become-ministers-of-finance/
I have written enough about the foolishness of subsidizing the child rearing and nurse training in First World countries by doing this ourselves at great expense and waste, in this case giving aid to Great Britain to the tune of hundreds of thousands in EC dollars in exchange for remittances from migrants of a few thousand dollars a year and only note that Barbados is now moving to reverse this mad process (https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/10/23/barbados-government-working-to-limit-nursing-brain-drain/), something we should have done years ago.
As well it is clear that sustained migration from place like SVG is the sign of a failed society, as a new report again has shown (https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/11/02/letter-endemic-emigration-a-symptom-of-failed-economies/).
We are up sh*t’s creek and paddling backwards with our hands because we lost the paddle long ago.
The recruitment of VincentIan nurses to work in England is not new. This process has been taking place long before SVG was discovered by Ralph.
Excellent PM.
This is a horrifying development when the government supports brain drain of it’s country.
It is incredible how many people always support the migration of the most educated and ambitious of our people so that other countries can benefit from their labour and talents while we some crumbs in monthly remittances of EC$ 100-200 an month a barrel at full of expired canned food at Christmas. A country that embraces such a policy is called a “failed state” (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/413907-its-time-to-treat-mass-emigration-countries-as-rogue-states).
I don’t understand the economics of training nurses so that they can be sent to England to work. I England paying for their training?
This is reality that was put on your post thanks for not approving it. You did not have anyone that was hurt by iy and you would never understand what it is like to have your saving account freezed, with no benefit, no healthcare and on the verge of losing your home. However, time will tell because I read of two Vincentians and I am sure that there are more; one a retired NIH nurse and the movie about the Vincentian Army veteran who was refused his pension because after serving in the British Army they deemed him not to be a British citizen.
It is clear that you don’t only get your info from IWNSVG where the main narrative is an endorsement of the current prime minister and his party and we are the push-back.
Iam a registered nurse trained in zambia at ndola college of nursing i would to work and be trained in the new program as a vincentian .thanks
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater? I can’t figure out what kind of calculus the PM uses when making decisions. it is as if the PM knows nothing about economics or probability and statistics by the way in which he is hellbent on exporting the country’s workforce. I often hear certain people say that they plan to go back to their home countries. I have never met a Vincy who says this. I was thinking this some time ago but then I started to read the SVGNewspapers.
Sending the surplus unemployed to the UK serves another purpose it takes the numbers down on the free food handouts and lowers the a amount paid from the poor fund. It’s fortunate they are nurses I doubt anyone would want them otherwise.
Also to be of UK standards I would imagine they will require a lot of further training in the UK. I doubt when supplied raw they would be anywhere near the standard required by the British.