Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe is avoid­ing di­rect an­swers on whether some re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers, now protest­ing their ex­clu­sion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) ten per cent wage in­crease deal, will re­ceive back­pay be­fore Christ­mas.

At the same time, the PSA’s lead­er­ship has re­mained silent, deep­en­ing un­cer­tain­ty among af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that for back­pay to be processed this month, in­struc­tions would have had to be is­sued by the close of busi­ness yes­ter­day, with pay­roll de­part­ments across the RHAs hav­ing al­ready fi­nalised De­cem­ber salaries.