People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin said,
“SDLP Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon’s announcement that charges for public transportation will be imposed on health and social care workers starting August 31 is a backward and out-of-touch step.
Free public transportation should remain in place indefinitely for frontline health workers. And, instead, the Minister should look to expand free access as part of a ‘new deal’ for workers. Increasing public transportation use is a key way to respond to climate change.
We need radical thinking now more than ever but this is a bizarre decision given the very public pressures on nurses and health service workers right now. Unfortunately, despite the Executive’s wishful thinking, we are very far from being out of the pandemic.
The Minister cites the Executive’s so-called ‘Pathway to Recovery’ as the reason for hitting nurses and others on the frontline with renewed charges. What kind of ‘recovery’ will be built on the backs of working class communities?
Following consecutive insulting below inflation pay offers from the Tories, nurses and health workers are preparing for possible industrial action. Mallon’s announcement fits into a pattern of ‘back to business as usual’ announcements from the Westminster and Stormont political establishment.
Elites and bosses want nothing more than for frontline workers to ‘get back in their box’ after a year and a half of sacrifice.
We should resist on every front and demand a fundamental change away from Stormont’s ‘business as usual’ approach for the rich and politically connected.”