Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Even as ques­tions to who sanc­tioned the $65,000 salary paid to Prof An­tho­ny Joseph and in what ca­pac­i­ty he was hired at the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (Os­ha) re­main unan­swered, more than $3 mil­lion in gra­tu­ities re­main out­stand­ing to work­ers.

And, ac­cord­ing to line min­is­ter Er­rol Mc Leod, un­der whose purview the agency falls, no re­sponse would be forth­com­ing on the con­tentious is­sue. Pressed by Sun­day Guardian as to why he has failed to shed some light on whether Joseph was hired as an ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant or chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Os­ha, Mc Leod replied: "I sug­gest you speak to Prof Joseph."

Ques­tioned whether he was briefed on the mat­ter, giv­en that he promised to re­spond to the is­sue last Mon­day, Mc Leod said: "I am briefed on sev­er­al mat­ters and the is­sue you are in­quir­ing about did not come up with any im­por­tance." But even as Joseph con­tin­ues to re­ceive fees as an ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant (now chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor) of Os­ha, Sun­day Guardian has learnt that out­stand­ing monies to­talling the sum of $3,748,023.28 are owed to the work­ers for the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2010.

The work­ers were pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed un­der the Min­istry of Labour dur­ing 2006 to 2007 be­fore the es­tab­lish­ment of Os­ha. Sun­day Guardian learnt that it was fol­low­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the agency in 2007 that the work­ers, main­ly in­spec­tors, were of­fered new con­tracts. Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the con­tracts end­ed in 2010, but to date, no gra­tu­ities have been paid from ei­ther the min­istry or Os­ha.

The con­tract of em­ploy­ment of­fered to the work­ers stat­ed that gra­tu­ity and va­ca­tion leave earned by staff pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed by the min­istry would be reck­oned fol­low­ing the tran­si­tion. A dis­grun­tled in­spec­tor, who spoke to Sun­day Guardian un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said: "We are fed up of get­ting the runaround.

Every­day ques­tions are asked we con­tin­ue to get dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tions. MoL (Min­istry of Labour) of­fi­cials are say­ing that the out­stand­ing pay­ments have to be paid by Os­ha, and then Os­ha of­fi­cials are telling us that since we came from MoL the pay­ments have to be made from the min­istry."

How­ev­er, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that even while the monies re­main out­stand­ing, in­spec­tors have been man­dat­ed to be on call 24/7 and are not re­mu­ner­at­ed. Asked what was caus­ing the de­lay in pay­ment, Mc Leod al­so re­fused to com­ment stat­ing: "A num­ber of is­sues are be­ing car­ried in the me­dia with a ma­li­cious in­tent and I do not want to get in­volved in that.

If peo­ple have dif­fi­cul­ties with their terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, I am sure they are ful­ly aware as to how to ap­proach them. I am not deal­ing with such is­sues in the me­dia."

Con­sul­tant con­duct­ing per­for­mance ap­praisals

But even as the min­is­ter has opt­ed to take a hands-off ap­proach, Joseph con­tin­ues to throw his weight around at Os­ha, sources said. The ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant (now chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor) is al­so set to con­duct per­for­mance ap­praisals at the agency.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that un­der Os­ha's or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart, the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor does not ex­ist. Ap­proval has on­ly been grant­ed for the po­si­tion of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor. The salary and al­lowances ap­proved by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion for the po­si­tion is $45,000.

A re­view of the guide­lines for con­tract em­ploy­ment in the gov­ern­ment ser­vice is­sued by the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer states that a per­ma­nent pub­lic se­nior of­fi­cer can as­sess con­tract of­fi­cers or an­oth­er of­fi­cer em­ployed on con­tract. Ac­cord­ing to the guide­lines a con­sul­tant on con­tract for ser­vices has no au­thor­i­ty to con­duct ap­praisals.

Who is joseph

• Joseph, who re­cent­ly re­turned from the Unit­ed States, was a for­mer Prof at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, be­fore be­ing hired at Os­ha as an ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant (now chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor).

• Was in charge of the en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies pro­gramme, su­per­vis­ing up to 21 re­search stu­dents pur­su­ing their MPhil and PhD de­grees.

• Sev­er­al of the stu­dents, how­ev­er, are now pur­su­ing dif­fer­ent cours­es, af­ter they failed to meet the re­quired stan­dard to com­plete the de­gree.