YESTERDAY WAS D-day for 20 out of 28 employees of the Trafalgar Development Bank (TDB) who were made redundant to make way for the bank to be run by personnel from Pan Caribbean Merchant Bank (PCMB).
However, the employees found several discrepancies in their redundancy pay packages.
The discrepancies were downplayed as being "not major" by several staff members interviewed by The Gleaner yesterday. According to these sources, who asked not to be identified, while there is no problem with the gross amounts or income tax deductions, there was a controversy with the calculation of education and National Housing Trust (NHT) tax deductions.
One employee said the bank's management applied these deductions as a percentage of the total amount of salary in each case, while the workers believe the deductions should only have been applied as a percentage of the portion which was deemed taxable.
According to immediate former president Victor Rhone, the workers and senior management agreed to seek independent legal and accounting opinions on the issue and, having received those opinions late yesterday, relevant adjustments were made to the computations.
Mr. Rhone said the adjustments were to the satisfaction of both sides and, what he described as a slight hiccup, was settled.
First Life Insurance Company (itself a subsidiary of the Pan Jamaican Investment Trust Group) recently became a 68 per cent owner of TDB but First Life already owned PCMB and decided to rationalise both, placing TDB under the control of PCMB and injecting about $750 million worth of new capital into the entity.
