St Vincent faces crisis

CANA Online, 24 April 2000

Kingstown, St Vincent, CANA - Trade union and political leaders are preparing to shut down St. Vincent today. They have called for work stoppages across the island to protest passage of a bill last Wednesday granting increased pension and gratuity benefits to parliamentarians. Ahead of the crisis, nurses and prison officers have been calling in sick, forcing doctors at the main Kingstown General Hospital to send home patients who do not require critical care and causing the relocation of condemned prisoners from the building housing the female prison to the main male penitentiary.