Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Enough is enough!

This was the sen­ti­ment among sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers from Spe­cial Elite In­ves­ti­ga­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed when they spoke to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) on Thurs­day, ex­press­ing their griev­ances with the com­pa­ny.

The pri­ma­ry con­cern of the em­ploy­ees was the con­sis­tent de­lays in salary pay­ments, which they said were se­vere­ly im­pact­ing their per­son­al lives.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Karen Lynch ex­plained, “It was in Oc­to­ber this whole prob­lem take place. Re­al bad pay, re­al prob­lems. Every six weeks she ain’t pay­ing, she giv­ing you one salary and then af­ter forc­ing you to come out to work and if you ain’t come out she will hit you a charge, that is what go­ing on,” she said.

Lynch, who has been with the com­pa­ny for four years, said she took pride in her job but strug­gled to meet her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties due to the salary de­lays, which of­ten oc­curred dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion or around Christ­mas.

“My child could not go to school for the longest while, the teach­ers want­ed to know why. They said they will call so­cial ser­vices,” she added.

Lynch wasn’t the on­ly one af­fect­ed. Guardian Me­dia learned that the com­pa­ny’s work­ers are sta­tioned at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, and Wendy Fitzwilliam Pae­di­atric Hos­pi­tal in Mount Hope.

Khadi­ja Camp­bell al­so shared her dif­fi­cul­ties, say­ing, “This cause me to get dis­con­nect­ed from T&TEC. I am in ar­rears with WASA, I get dis­con­nect­ed from Dig­i­cel, I can’t buy gro­ceries for my chil­dren and them. I have a daugh­ter who at­tends Bish­op Anstey, I can bare­ly sup­port her and she’s do­ing ex­treme­ly well right now,” she said.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee, who wished to re­main anony­mous, said, “As a fa­ther with one son, 14 years, he’s not able to go to school, I’m not able to buy clothes for him, toi­letries etc.”

New moth­er Tr­ish­nail Roberts re­vealed that the com­pa­ny still owes her for De­cem­ber 2023, and up­on vis­it­ing the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, she found that no pay­ments had been made. “Pres­sure went so high that I al­most died with the ba­by,” she said.

The em­ploy­ees said they were told that the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) was re­spon­si­ble for the de­lays. How­ev­er, a for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er, Hay­den Ochoa, de­nied this claim, say­ing, “I used to do up the in­voice; I have doc­u­men­ta­tion where they were paid.”

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ja­son Reyes and CEO Karen Rowans-Reyes of Spe­cial Elite In­ves­ti­ga­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed de­nied the claims. Rowans-Reyes men­tioned that they had re­cent­ly dis­missed two work­ers for theft and wished the ag­griev­ed em­ploy­ees had spo­ken to her first, as the claims were new to her.

“My hus­band and I both went to the com­pound and paid work­ers per­son­al­ly,” she said, adding that on­ly one salary was out­stand­ing and NIS pay­ments were up to date.

Reyes pro­vid­ed Guardian Me­dia with a po­lice re­port filed against Ochoa at the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion for threats.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Davlin Thomas, CEO of the NCRHA, who said that pay­ments to the com­pa­ny were up to date.

The work­ers are now call­ing on the Min­istry of Labour and the Fraud Squad to in­ves­ti­gate.