A Bogus Doctor Argument II
April 27, 2003
by Dr Winford James
Last Sunday, I rejected as bogus, insensitive, and unenlightened the position of NWRHA and SWRHA doctors that they were being discriminated against, as a matter of arbitrary political policy, since Tobago RHA doctors are being paid better than they. I also opined that for them to also demand to be paid more than Tobago RHA doctors, because they considered themselves to be exposed to greater degrees of stress, was crass since the position suggested that salary size should in part be linked to amount of worker stress - in the calculation of salaries in the state sector. My position on the better pay of the Tobago RHA doctors was that it was an incentive to the latter for working in crisis conditions that were, and had been for a long, long time, far worse than those in Trinidad.
My position was an understatement of the state of affairs.
It is not only that Tobago RHA doctors work in more depressed conditions and need to be attracted to the island by special financial incentives. Far more accurately, it is that, in the polity of Trinidad and Tobago, Tobago has been a backyard where the level of social, economic, and cultural amenities is typically frustrating, daunting, and alienating to many beyond certain levels of personal accomplishment. Put differently, Tobago has been so badly undeveloped that it is routinely a place to migrate from in the natural quest for better opportunities in education, occupation, and sophistication. It is a place where you can easily be mired in stagnation of every type if you do not uproot yourself and go elsewhere - like Trinidad, the United Kingdom, and America.
I am not aware that the history of migration has been researched and written, but over the years hundreds of thousands have left the place at different ages, many in late teenage. Those that moved to Trinidad have preferred the oil belt in the deep south, the fishing and agriculture of the deep east, and the public service (the civil service, the teaching service, the police service, the fire service, the prison service, the army, the coast guard) and the university from vantage points along the east-west corridor. They have congregated many walks of life. Some of the positions they have moved into have been available in Tobago, but they migrated nonetheless because of, among other factors, easier mobility, more occupational options, better educational choices for children, and a social environment that they perceived to be less narrow, less limiting and inhibiting, faster-paced and more exciting, more mind-broadening. When they move, they seldom return to work and negotiate adult lives in their prime.
Tobago has seen more and more development in recent times, but the talent-taking migration continues. Of course, some stay and, by some recondite socioeconomic law, have kept the population between 30, 000 and 50,000 for years and years. For example, though teachers have been moving, many stay - largely, I think, because it is easy to create teachers (and, therefore, replace the migrants) since the entry qualifications are so undemanding (e.g., a few O levels, a miniscule registration fee, an endorsement from a registered teacher).
It is not so easy to create and keep doctors. The training, as we all know, is long, expensive, intensive, and extensive. The politics of Trinidad and Tobago over the years have ensured the existence of educational, economic, and life-goals conditions in Tobago such that, proportionately, there are far few Tobagonian than Trinidadian doctors. The pastures for doctors elsewhere are far greener. Socioeconomic conditions in Tobago have not developed quickly enough to accommodate the lifestyle expectations of the average doctor.
It is against this background that the higher pay for the Tobago RHA doctors must be viewed. The poorer working environment focused on in the previous column is only a subset of this background. Of course, the ultimate logic of higher pay is that if the background improved to levels contemporaneously available in Trinidad, then the need for higher would evaporate.
But then, under what national or Tobagonian politics could Tobago catch up with Trinidad?
A Bogus Doctor Argument I | A Bogus Doctor Argument II
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