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Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art is rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns over re­ports that the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) is mov­ing to re­cruit more than 100 mid­wives from In­dia, de­scrib­ing the de­vel­op­ment as both in­ad­e­quate and dis­re­spect­ful to lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

The re­port­ed re­cruit­ment dri­ve comes at a time of mount­ing ten­sion with­in the NCRHA, as nurs­es con­tin­ue to protest long­stand­ing staffing short­ages, stalled salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and work­ing con­di­tions many de­scribe as un­ten­able.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Stu­art said while the au­thor­i­ty has be­gun hir­ing some lo­cal nurs­ing per­son­nel, the num­bers fall far short of what is re­quired to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the cri­sis.