Former Oneita workers to be paid By Denise Clarke, Staff Reporter WESTERN BUREAU: FORMER EMPLOYEES of the Oneita Stratleven garment factories in Montego Bay are to start receiving their redundancy payments today, more than two years after the company ceased operating. About 800 workers are expected to collect their redundancy cheques at the Ministry of Labour's regional offices in Montego Bay. The payments, which will be made alphabetically, are scheduled to run until September 4. The payments should have been made more than six weeks ago, but was delayed because the cheques had not yet been signed by the company's management. Oneita Industries, which operated two apparel factories in the Montego Bay Freezone and the Montego Bay Freeport, closed down in May 1999, when their parent company in the United States, Oneita Inc. International went bankrupt. The assets of the firm were sold and the proceeds used to offset the claims of the former employees, who had received only their outstanding salary payments at the closure. Government had assembled a task force to formulate a plan to protect the workers' interest and to look at the possibility of the plants reopening. Through Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO), an effort was made to reopen the plants under the leadership of Montego Bay businessman Winston Dear in 1999, but that fell through after the former employees refused to accept a proposal to reinvest their redundancy pay into a new company.
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