THE UNION representing the island's medical technologists, who have been on strike since Thursday, will try to get them to resume duties this morning to facilitate a new round of talks with officials of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance and Planning later today.
If they resume duties, Fitz Jackson, Minister of State for Finance, and Health Minister, John Junor, will meet with the Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP) at 4:00 p.m to continue talks on their reclassification.
On Friday night, the parties ended talks at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security with an agreement that UTASP would seek to end the strike by this morning.
The health service is expected to continue to withstand the pressures brought on by the strike, despite the shortage of staff to conduct blood and other medical laboratory tests.
Medical technologists are protesting against the Government's delay in resolving a dispute over their classification in relation to scientific officers in the public service. They want to be paid the same salaries as scientific officers insisting they were doing similar work.
The strike has slowed laboratory work at most major public hospitals across the island, as well as the National Public Health Laboratory and the Blood Bank at Slipe Pen Road in Kingston, where a skeleton staff of supervisors and department heads have been working the shifts.
