Last Sat­ur­day, no um­pires turned up for four sec­ond round match­es of the North Zone Crick­et Coun­cil 2013 League�Se­nior Di­vi­sion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Sec­re­tary of the North Zone Crick­et Um­pires and Scor­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Prem­c­hand Roop­ia, has re­port­ed that um­pires are with­hold­ing their ser­vices un­til bet­ter terms and con­di­tions are met. The um­pires claim that um­pires were paid $50 per day in 1994 and al­most twen­ty years lat­er, are paid $100 per day. The um­pires be­lieve this is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able.

Be­fore the start of the sea­son, um­pires re­quest­ed a fee of $175. Chair­man of the North Crick­et Coun­cil, Don As­gar­ali, said the Coun­cil could not af­ford to pay that fig­ure and of­fered them $150, sub­ject to rat­i­fi­ca­tion by oth­er mem­bers of the coun­cil. The um­pires were in­formed that the Coun­cil de­cid­ed that $125 per day was their best of­fer. This was re­ject­ed by the um­pires who agreed to ac­cept $140 per day. The Coun­cil said its fi­nal of­fer was $125.

In ad­di­tion to the pay dis­pute, um­pires are not sat­is­fied with the ba­sic amen­ties at the crick­et grounds. These in­clude toi­let and seat­ing fa­cil­i­ties and an in­ad­e­quate sup­ply of bot­tled wa­ter, or at times no wa­ter at all.

Roop­ia said that the um­pires in oth­er Zones were re­ceiv­ing $200 per day. He stat­ed that the As­so­ci­a­tion was will­ing to re­turn to games pro­vid­ing the Coun­cil im­proves its re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age. The North Zone Crick­et Um­pires and Scor­ers As­so­ci­a­tion is will­ing to re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble in an ef­fort to reach an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion.