Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Dai­ly-paid URP work­ers and CEPEP work­ers in To­ba­go will soon see an in­crease in their dai­ly wages, ac­cord­ing to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of­fi­cials.

Speak­ing dur­ing the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil meet­ing me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Joel Samp­son, said URP work­ers will al­so be giv­en leave en­ti­tle­ments and re­struc­tured job ti­tles. He said all the changes to this pro­gramme will be im­ple­ment­ed from Ju­ly 14.

“This step is deemed nec­es­sary to erase du­bi­ous job ti­tles, over­lap­ping of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, stream­lin­ing of op­er­a­tions, im­prov­ing morale and en­abling the earn­ing of a liv­ing wage. This ac­tion is viewed as a pos­i­tive step which should lead to an im­prove­ment in the lives and so­cial con­di­tions of our work­ers,” he said.

Based on the fig­ures called, on av­er­age, work­ers will see at least a $50 in­crease in their dai­ly salary. The im­ple­men­ta­tion of leave en­ti­tle­ments in­cludes two weeks of va­ca­tion leave, 14 sick days an­nu­al­ly, four days of pa­ter­ni­ty leave per birth, three days of be­reave­ment leave and 14 weeks of ma­ter­ni­ty leave.

Sec­re­tary of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Ter­ance Baynes said sim­i­lar changes will be made for CEPEP work­ers, bar­ring leave en­ti­tle­ments, come Ju­ly 4. He not­ed work is be­ing done on ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fits for these work­ers.

While it’s no doubt wel­comed news for the em­ploy­ees, Baynes is­sued them a warn­ing.

“We are con­cerned about the work­force in To­ba­go in gen­er­al. That is why we are do­ing this work and what this al­so means is—be­cause to whom much is giv­en, much is re­quired—we have no place for delin­quen­cy in the work­force. We know there are some peo­ple who do not treat work the way work ought to be treat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the THA,” he said.

“We want to say to folks that while we are do­ing this work to im­prove con­di­tions and try­ing to im­prove wages and so on it is ex­pect­ed there will be a rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion on the part of the work­ers. That you will do the work that you are called up­on to do and so on so that we can work to­geth­er to make this place the best lit­tle is­land on the plan­et.”

Al­so speak­ing at the brief­ing yes­ter­day was Sec­re­tary of Set­tle­ment, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Ian Pol­lard, who said the THA hopes to square over $9 mil­lion in var­i­ous out­stand­ing pay­ments to peo­ple on the is­land by June 24.

“The di­vi­sion will be host­ing a cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny on June 24 to ad­dress the back­log of pend­ing pay­ments to­talling $9.27 mil­lion to 656 per­sons,” he said.

He said this mon­ey was ac­crued over the past two to three years and in­cludes pay­ments for pro­grammes such as home im­prove­ment, toi­let erad­i­ca­tion, home com­ple­tion and oth­er things.

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