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NBTS still to replace sacked employees
…as blood bank is understaffed
Shameeza Mangal
After sacking eight employees from the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS), the blood bank is still to find replacements.
Currently, the NBTS is advertising vacancies for an administrator, a medical technologist, staff nurse and blood organisers.
A source said that the NBTS is understaffed and as such there is pressure on the remaining staff members who have to organise various blood drives across the country.
But National Blood Donor Manager of the NBTS, Shameeza Mangal, told this newspaper that there is no staff shortage at the blood bank and that she was not even aware that there is an advertisement in the papers seeking employees.
Mangal did admit that the blood bank is in need of more blood organisers, but refused to acknowledge that the NBTS is affected by this.
“The blood bank is not grossly understaffed, but we do need more people,” Mangal told Kaieteur News yesterday.
As it is currently, the blood bank is still experiencing a shortage of blood, and has not been able to reach its weekly buffer stock of 144 units.
However, this newspaper was also reliably informed that ever since the employees were fired in November, it was then that the NBTS started to experience a severe shortage of blood, due to the fact that there were no blood organisers to manage any blood drives.
In fact, one of the employees who was fired and prefers not to be named told Kaieteur News yesterday that when the sacked employees were working at the blood bank, they had a lot of connections with a number of organizations, and as such they were able to collect more blood.
However, now that there is a shortage of blood organisers, the collection is being affected.
These employees were fired in November after Health Minister; Dr. Leslie Ramsammy said that they were ‘incompetent.’
But these persons had claimed that they are very much qualified with their degrees and diplomas from the University of Guyana and cannot understand why they were fired.
The employees were also sent home at a time when the PEPFAR report had revealed that the NBTS was dumping blood.
The former employee of the blood bank told Kaieteur News that she believes that they were fired because Dr. Ramsammy thought that it was them who had leaked the PEPFAR report to the media.
However, according to the individual, they were not even aware that a PEPFAR report had existed until it was made public in the press.
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