Late salary row deepens between minister, PNM-run corporations

JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­[email protected]

Sev­er­al chair­men and may­ors of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled re­gion­al and bor­ough cor­po­ra­tions are com­plain­ing that is­sues with pay­ments from the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment are im­pact­ing the func­tion­ing of their cor­po­ra­tions.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said that on­ly one cor­po­ra­tion, the San Juan/Laven­tille Cor­po­ra­tion, re­ceived a late cheque, re­sult­ing in late pay­ments to staff.

“It was not re­port­ed to me by ei­ther the chair­man or the CEO. It on­ly came to my at­ten­tion when a work­er sent a memo is­sued by the chair­man to work­ers, in­di­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. I im­me­di­ate­ly in­ter­vened, and the mat­ter was rec­ti­fied by our per­ma­nent sec­re­tary the very same day.

“I am tak­ing a note of their mis­chief, and I con­demn the PNM for us­ing work­ers in their po­lit­i­cal mis­chief. De­lays in re­leas­es can hap­pen at any time. It is the du­ty of the CEO and chair­man to bring it to the at­ten­tion of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and min­is­ter in ad­vance. I en­cour­age all work­ers who en­counter this type of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, es­pe­cial­ly from PNM cor­po­ra­tions, to bring it to our at­ten­tion im­me­di­ate­ly,” Min­is­ter Ameen told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Ear­li­er this week, some work­ers of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion protest­ed, de­mand­ing pay­ment.

They were sup­posed to re­ceive pay­ments be­tween Ash Wednes­day and last Fri­day, but did not.

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­po­ra­tion’s chair­man, Richard Wal­cott, the cheque from the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ar­rived af­ter five o’clock on Thurs­day.

“There­fore, that had to be de­posit­ed on Fri­day to be cleared. It will take about four days in the bank be­fore salaries can be paid. So, I guess, some peo­ple will not get paid un­til some­time next week.

“When I in­quired from the min­istry, what they told me was that they on­ly got per­mis­sion from the Trea­sury to print the cheque on Thurs­day.

“Re­leas­es for pay are nor­mal­ly late, but this is the sec­ond time. In Jan­u­ary, mem­bers of the coun­cil got paid ten days af­ter pay­day, but we made no is­sue of it. But when it’s af­fect­ing the staff of the cor­po­ra­tion, we had to do some­thing about it. So, it hap­pened last month, and it hap­pened this month,” Wal­cott said.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to let cor­po­ra­tions know in ad­vance if there are is­sues with pay­ments, be­cause the man­age­ment of the cor­po­ra­tion was be­ing un­fair­ly blamed.

Wal­cott said he al­so hoped the cor­po­ra­tions af­fect­ed could meet with Min­is­ter Ameen to iron out the is­sues, in or­der to pre­vent any fur­ther oc­cur­rences.

Mean­while, Diego Mar­tin May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin had com­plaints of their own.

“It’s been hap­pen­ing every month. You know, and it’s cause for con­cern. Salaries, in par­tic­u­lar, are a con­cern and al­so with re­spect to the in­crease in NIS con­tri­bu­tions.

“Al­so, the new work­ers, the new work­ers that were hired as part of the clean-up pro­gramme, they wait­ed like a month and a half to be paid, and a lot of them got short pay yes­ter­day,” Austin said.

May­or Glas­gow-Warn­er de­scribed the re­leas­es from cen­tral Gov­ern­ment as un­pre­dictable. She said it of­ten led to con­fu­sion in sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“At this point, I feel as if this new gov­ern­ment re­leas­es mon­ey when they feel or when they want. I would have linked with our CEO. What I was told is that there is a de­lay, but I was told that the check is sup­posed to be ready or some­thing like that. But not un­til Mon­day, I would know ex­act­ly what the sta­tus is.

“This is some­thing that has been hap­pen­ing for quite some time, but specif­i­cal­ly cer­tain cor­po­ra­tions like San Fer­nan­do, Tu­na­puna, and San Juan have had trou­ble with re­leas­es, and I re­al­ly don’t know why,” May­or Glas­gow-Warn­er said.

She al­so com­plained that re­leas­es were not match­ing ini­tial al­lo­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the may­or, cor­po­ra­tion heads from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress held ar­eas have al­so com­plained to her.

How­ev­er, San­gre Grande Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip and Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo of UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions told Guardian Me­dia that they had no is­sues with late pay­ments.

“We have a pro­ce­dure to fol­low, and I be­lieve if all cor­po­ra­tions fol­low the pro­ce­dure, things should be smooth.

“The same chal­lenges we have been fac­ing when it comes to the re­leas­es, but we are guid­ed by the fi­nance of­fi­cer that we have. We will work with him to en­sure that you are up to date on time,” Phillips said.