RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

An on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween a sub­con­trac­tor and the main con­trac­tor at the Land­mark­TT hous­ing project in Ste Madeleine es­ca­lat­ed yes­ter­day when the sub­con­trac­tor locked the gates of the con­struc­tion site, prompt­ing po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

The sub­con­trac­tor, An­tho­ny Fred­er­ick, claims he is owed mon­ey for work car­ried out at the project and that out­stand­ing pay­ments have left some of his work­ers with­out wages.

How­ev­er, main con­trac­tor Naz­mudeen Khan Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors has de­nied ow­ing Fred­er­ick for com­plet­ed work, say­ing pay­ments are made at var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion.

The con­struc­tion site is un­der the purview of Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed, a State en­ter­prise es­tab­lished by the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site, con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty was con­tin­u­ing, while sev­er­al work­ers who said they were af­fect­ed by the dis­pute were gath­ered out­side the gates.

One work­er, Brent Yatali, said he was owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $16,000 af­ter work­ing at the site sev­er­al months ago. Two oth­er work­ers, Dale Reynolds and Keron Brew­ster, claimed they were owed $2,800 by Fred­er­ick.

Reynolds said it was dis­tress­ing not to be paid, adding that he had worked very hard.

“It un­fair for us. They need to pay us our mon­ey,” he said.

Yatali said he was un­able to re­ward his daugh­ter af­ter she re­ceived eight CSEC pass­es.

Mean­while, Fred­er­ick said he had been con­tract­ed by Khan to com­plete two hous­es.

He claimed he was re­moved from the project be­fore com­plet­ing the build­ings and al­leged that the sup­ply of ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment had af­fect­ed his abil­i­ty to com­plete the work.

“The sit­u­a­tion on this site is very bad. They’ve giv­en me a con­tract on this site. My work­ers are work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble, but we are owed monies for works that are done,” Fred­er­ick said.

He said one build­ing was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 per cent com­plete, with plas­ter­ing and the in­stal­la­tion of doors and door frames out­stand­ing, while an­oth­er sec­tion was about 94 per cent com­plete.

Fred­er­ick said his com­pa­ny had eight work­ers, four of whom were still await­ing pay­ment be­cause of what he de­scribed as out­stand­ing mon­ey owed to his com­pa­ny.

“I had paid the ma­jor­i­ty of them. It’s just these last four here that we are wait­ing on mon­ey, some out­stand­ing mon­ey from his ac­count to pay,” he said.

He al­so raised con­cerns about scaf­fold­ing and oth­er equip­ment, claim­ing that work­ers some­times had to per­form ad­di­tion­al tasks be­cause the nec­es­sary equip­ment was un­avail­able.

Fred­er­ick said the dis­pute in­ten­si­fied af­ter Khan ob­ject­ed to the man­ner in which some of his work­ers spoke to him. He de­nied de­lib­er­ate­ly de­lay­ing the work.

Khan, how­ev­er, gave a dif­fer­ent ac­count of the dis­pute.

He said Fred­er­ick had been as­signed three hous­es but had start­ed work on on­ly two. Ac­cord­ing to Khan, one of the hous­es had re­mained in­ac­tive for sev­er­al weeks, plac­ing pres­sure on the project to meet its dead­lines.

Khan al­so dis­put­ed Fred­er­ick’s claim that he was with­hold­ing ma­te­ri­als.

He said ma­te­ri­als cost mon­ey and would not be sup­plied to a build­ing where there were in­suf­fi­cient work­ers to car­ry out the work.

Khan said Fred­er­ick had al­so been asked to cor­rect de­fects in the work be­fore fur­ther pay­ments could be made.

He main­tained that he had doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing pay­ment records and cheques, to sup­port his po­si­tion that Fred­er­ick had been paid for com­plet­ed stages of the work.

Khan al­so de­nied that he had a prac­tice of re­mov­ing sub­con­trac­tors when projects neared com­ple­tion. He said Fred­er­ick had been paid ac­cord­ing to agreed stages and that, in some in­stances, he paid sub­con­trac­tors be­fore re­ceiv­ing pay­ment him­self from the com­pa­ny over­see­ing the project.

Khan said the arrange­ment was in­tend­ed to en­sure work­ers were paid and that work con­tin­ued with­out in­ter­rup­tion.

Re­gard­ing the work­ers who claimed they were owed mon­ey, Khan said their pay­ment arrange­ments were not nec­es­sar­i­ly with him and sug­gest­ed the is­sue had to be re­solved be­tween the work­ers and their em­ploy­er.

He said he was pre­pared to al­low work to con­tin­ue once out­stand­ing de­fects were cor­rect­ed and the re­quired work­force was avail­able.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein for com­ment and is await­ing a re­sponse.