In the next two weeks, more than 600 em­ploy­ees of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion will not be paid, since the cor­po­ra­tion claims it does not have mon­ey to pay them.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed, who said fi­nan­cial is­sues fac­ing the CBC had left them with no op­tions to pay em­ploy­ees.

But hours lat­er, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi urged the may­or to stop ‘the non­sense,” say­ing there was in­deed mon­ey. He even threat­ened to sue if the work­ers are not paid.

Yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed laid the blame for the de­ple­tion of funds on what he de­tailed as a predica­ment square­ly at the feet of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. Mo­hammed said be­cause of the dire sit­u­a­tion, the cor­po­ra­tion will be forced to close its doors on Mon­day.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and the coun­cil wrote to the for­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein and cur­rent Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi about a short­fall in fund­ing to pay work­ers months ago and to date, no re­sponse has been re­ceived.

The cor­po­ra­tion short­fall is said to be over $3 mil­lion and the work­ers are dai­ly rat­ed and paid fort­night­ly.

Send­ing home these es­sen­tial work­ers can af­fect op­er­a­tions in the bor­ough, in­clud­ing garbage col­lec­tion, pub­lic health and a myr­i­ad of ser­vices.

The may­or said he wrote to Min­is­ter Al-Rawi in March this year about the short­fall.

“I wrote to him on two oc­ca­sions sup­ply­ing all the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion and to date, noth­ing has ma­te­ri­alised. I had a meet­ing with him as well and he promised that it would be done and we are at a point in the fi­nan­cial year where there is no mon­ey left to pay staff at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.”

Mo­hammed lashed out at Al-Rawi for re­port­ed­ly al­lo­cat­ing $100,000 for fire­works for the 60th In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions.

“I say to my line Min­is­ter, the ho­n­ourable Faris Al-Rawi, do not let this be a stain on your lega­cy be­cause what we are forced do, we may have shut down the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion be­cause we can­not have work­ers with no pay in sight and we have no an­swers to give them be­cause we are get­ting no re­sponse from the Min­is­ter,” he said.

With let­ters and cor­re­spon­dence in hand, the Ch­agua­nas May­or was flanked by deputy May­or Marisa Ram­lo­gan and coun­cil­lor Deb­bie Bood­han.

He claimed the fail­ure to re­spond or dis­burse the mon­ey need­ed was “dis­crim­i­na­tion against UNC cor­po­ra­tions.”

Mo­hammed added that the coun­cil stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers.

“We al­so want to let the work­ers know that we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with you. We are giv­ing up our salary this month be­cause it will be un­fair that you are not be­ing paid and we are not be­ing paid.”

Al-Rawi: CBC has $ 7 mil­lion

to pay work­ers

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Faris Al-Rawi con­demned the may­or for his ac­tions.

Al-Rawi said he has the doc­u­men­ta­tion as well as wit­ness­es to meet­ings to prove the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion has over 7 mil­lion dol­lars in un­spent bal­ances, which can be used to pay work­ers of the cor­po­ra­tion.

“I want to ex­press my pro­found and ut­ter dis­ap­point­ment with the May­or of the Ch­agua­nas Cor­po­ra­tion, some­one I held in high re­gard, let me tell you why I am say­ing this so bold­ly and con­fi­dent­ly, it is ridicu­lous, it is rep­re­hen­si­ble for the May­or to be threat­en­ing peo­ple’s jobs.”

The Min­is­ter ex­plained that at the mid-year mark, he met with and asked all cor­po­ra­tions to in­di­cate any short­fall in mon­ey. He said while some were late in the sub­mis­sions, his min­istry worked dili­gent­ly to get the up­dat­ed fi­nan­cial records.

This is why he is rub­bish­ing the May­or’s claims of no mon­ey to pay work­ers.

“I can con­firm that I met with the May­or and with the CEO on Au­gust 9, one month ago, at the min­istry’s head of­fice, and showed them the un­spent bal­ances of $7 mil­lion. We as­signed an au­di­tor to get the au­dit func­tion done and dis­cussed with the May­or that job preser­va­tion was most crit­i­cal.

“We agreed that they would ac­cess the monies im­me­di­ate­ly, and un­spent bal­ances. Imag­ine that they have $7 mil­lion in un­spent bal­ances and we’ll come to­day to threat­en peo­ple to send them home. I am so ap­palled,” Al-Rawi said.

He added, “Stop play­ing with peo­ple’s lives. I don’t ex­pect this from you, per­haps you’re tak­ing the in­struc­tions of your po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, I don’t know. Stop it! Use the $7 mil­lion in un­spent bal­ances that you have. You are aware that we have re­quest­ed fur­ther monies and you’re aware that you’re get­ting $200,000 more, in­clud­ing monies that we have re­quest­ed for the pay­ment of the ser­vic­ing of all ve­hi­cles and as­sets.”

Al-Rawi al­so ad­vised work­ers to sue if the CBC clos­es and they are not paid

“I’m tempt­ed to say that I will per­son­al­ly go and sue...be­cause I think it is rep­re­hen­si­ble. Stop your non­sense.”