Salaries for Reserve troops sent to banks today

Amid com­plaints from mem­bers of the TT De­fence Force (TTDF) Re­serves over the non-pay­ment of salaries, the De­fence Force has promised to de­liv­er cheques of out­stand­ing salaries to banks by to­day (Wednes­day).

In a me­dia re­lease, the TTDF Re­serves ac­knowl­edged the de­layed pay­ment, which they at­trib­uted to “ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues” en­coun­tered dur­ing the pro­cess­ing of pay­roll doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“The lead­er­ship of the TTDF Re­serves recog­nis­es the in­con­ve­nience and hard­ship that de­layed pay­ments may cause and moved to ad­dress the mat­ter as pri­or­i­ty up­on iden­ti­fy­ing the is­sue.”

The TTDF Re­serves al­so not­ed that they would work to­wards strength­en­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es and re­duce the like­li­hood of sim­i­lar de­lays in the fu­ture.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd on Tues­day sev­er­al De­fence Force Re­servists took is­sue with the de­lays, not­ing that they were in dire need of their salaries.

One re­servist who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty not­ed that he and oth­ers were un­able to re­port to du­ty when called out as he sim­ply did not have enough mon­ey to trav­el to his mil­i­tary base.

“Imag­ine I don’t even have a $20 to get me from Point A to Point B. Every­time we try to raise this con­cern with se­niors they tell us that it’s “sure mon­ey,” and that our pay will “come when­ev­er it come,” we can’t live like this.”

An­oth­er re­servist claimed that he was await­ing pay­ment for the past two months and warned that such de­lays could low­er morale among troops at a time when they are be­ing asked to sup­ple­ment the ef­forts of law en­force­ment.