KINGSTOWN, St Vincent and the Grenadines — A march by public hospital workers over delayed pay adjustments ended on Sunday with 6,400 residents queuing to hand in unwanted medicines, turning a labour rally into the biggest single collection of its kind recorded on the island. Health officials weighed 2.3 tonnes of sealed packages, bottles and blister packs by the end of the day.
The collection was set up as a small side table beside the rally route. By early afternoon, organisers had moved 30 secure bins to the edge of the grounds; pharmacists kept the drop-off open until dusk as families arrived with bags saved from bathroom cupboards and kitchen drawers. The Ministry of Health said the haul would go for controlled disposal, not back to pharmacies.
A side table takes over
The rally was called by the Public Hospital Workers’ Guild, which represents 640 nurses, laboratory staff and clerks at Kingstown General Hospital. Its members say salary adjustments promised five months ago have not appeared in their pay packets. The march began outside the hospital and ended at the public gardens, where pharmacists had arranged the collection with the union.
“We thought we would fill a few crates. Then people started arriving with boxes they had kept for years,” said Gilles Y. Bédard, a guild organiser. He said the union had expected the pay dispute to dominate the day, but the medicine line stretched along the gardens’ sea-facing wall and drew passers-by who had not come for the march.
The ministry put the estimated retail value of the returned medicines and supplies at EC$2.4 million (about €800,000), though it cautioned that many packages were partly used or past their printed dates. A tally by the island’s pharmacy association counted 6,400 separate household drop-offs. Officials said they had no record of a larger one-day collection in St Vincent.
What officials will do next
The response exposed a practical problem: the island has no permanent public collection point for medicines people no longer need. Lauren H. Mashaba, a public-health director at the ministry, said a sample of 1,100 sealed packages included many past their printed dates. “This is not a second supply chain. None of these medicines will be redistributed,” she said. The items are being sorted for secure disposal.
Mashaba said the ministry would publish a disposal total by Friday and was discussing monthly collection days with pharmacies. The first follow-up is planned for Kingstown next month; officials have not yet settled on a site or budget. They will also assess whether the programme can reach communities outside the capital, where returning unwanted medicines may require a long trip.
The guild says the rally’s main demand remains unresolved: the ministry has not given workers a date for the delayed adjustments. Hospital managers said routine services continued on Sunday, and the union confirmed no strike has been called. For now, the bins are being moved to a locked storage room as the island’s pharmacists prepare a full count.
