Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Con­cerns about abuse of over­time and ex­tra du­ty pay­ments have led to a cut­back in al­lowances at the San Juan-Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, vice chair­man Kwe­si An­toine has re­vealed.

Work­ers yes­ter­day staged a protest at the cor­po­ra­tion’s Aranguez of­fice over the un­paid al­lowances. How­ev­er, An­toine claimed some work­ers were re­ceiv­ing more than $50,000 in al­lowances.

“We re­alised be­fore the end of the fi­nan­cial year that al­lowances and over­time had amount­ed to $3.8 mil­lion in just one de­part­ment,” he ex­plained.

“We were fac­ing a short­fall of around $7 to $8 mil­lion, which we re­quest­ed dur­ing the mid-year re­view but didn’t re­ceive. How­ev­er, I still pri­ori­tised salaries. So, we made the de­ci­sion to cut down on al­lowances and over­time to en­sure that jobs were main­tained. This was nec­es­sary to keep every­one em­ployed.”

He added: “We had some staff who didn’t like that be­cause some were abus­ing the sys­tem. It start­ed with some re­ceiv­ing as much as $10,000 a month or $4,000 to $5,000 a fort­night in trav­el and al­lowances, so we de­cid­ed to cut it down. These staff mem­bers then de­cid­ed to protest.”

Just un­der 100 work­ers turned up at the cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fice at the MTS Plaza de­mand­ing pay­ment of more than $3 mil­lion in al­lowances they claimed were owed to them.

Speak­ing on be­half of the work­ers, NUGFW rep­re­sen­ta­tive He­s­ton Lam­bert said, “Since March of this year there has been con­cern about the non-pay­ment of al­lowances and over­time for work­ers. We’ve had nu­mer­ous meet­ings to try and re­solve the is­sue. As of the last fort­night, there are about eight out­stand­ing pay­ments.”

While the work­ers were protest­ing, the union was meet­ing with the cor­po­ra­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“As I speak, the griev­ance sec­re­tary, who is al­so the su­per­vi­sor of the Ari­ma sub-of­fice, Na­dia Lam­bert, has gone in­side to speak with the CEO and oth­ers. I’m out­side par­tic­i­pat­ing in the demon­stra­tion be­cause I feel we’ve talked enough.

“How­ev­er, as a union, we still like to sit around the ta­ble and dis­cuss the is­sues. When she comes back, she’ll in­form us about what hap­pened in the meet­ing,” Lam­bert said.

“We want to bring at­ten­tion to the min­is­ter and cen­tral gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing what’s hap­pen­ing. We al­so want to high­light to the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment what’s tak­ing place with­in the San Juan-Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, which is a PNM-led cor­po­ra­tion.”