Work­ers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to ur­gent­ly ad­dress what they de­scribe as a crit­i­cal short­age of con­sum­ables need­ed for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the hos­pi­tal.

Dur­ing a lunchtime protest out­side the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, work­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kester Thomas, said they have no in­ten­tion of with­draw­ing their labour but can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly with­out es­sen­tial sup­plies.

“There are many items miss­ing—lab sponges, suc­tion tub­ing, blue sur­gi­cal pa­per. These are es­sen­tial for op­er­a­tions, and right now those items are at ze­ro,” Thomas said.