Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art is dis­miss­ing al­le­ga­tions of fraud lev­elled at nurs­es by North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

Speak­ing dur­ing the NCRHA’s Pub­lic Board Meet­ing at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, on Thurs­day evening, Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty had re­quest­ed a foren­sic au­dit in­to ex­ces­sive over­time pay­ments and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the NCRHA.

“When we came in, over­time pay­ments for pool nurs­ing were close to $40 mil­lion. We have now brought that fig­ure down to less than $4 mil­lion while main­tain­ing ad­e­quate nurs­ing per­son­nel. It still needs im­prove­ment, and with the hir­ing of 78 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es, we ex­pect fur­ther progress,” Gopeesingh said.