FORMER WORKERS of the Scientific Research Council (SRC) are yet to be paid by Government, six weeks after they were made redundant.
Danny Roberts, president of the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE), which represents the workers, yesterday expressed his dissatisfaction with the time it is taking the Government to make funds available for the redundancy payments.
UNMET PROMISES
Mr. Roberts said the redundancies were carried out at the end of June at which time the 20 workers were made to understand that payments would have been made by the following week.
"They promised the workers, on the 30th of June, that one week after the redundancy they would be paid. It is now five weeks since the redundancy... and nothing has happened," Mr. Roberts charged.
He noted that during discussions prior to the decision taken by the management of the SRC to make the workers redundant, he tried to convince the SRC to delay the move until the funds were certain. This was ignored. Mr. Roberts said many of the workers were experiencing difficulties as they have no source of income.
"To tell me that to send the information over to the Ministry of Finance is (taking so much time) is absolutely insufficient and unacceptable because what you have done is send home some poor people who don't have any money in dem pocket and don't know when dem going to get any money," Mr. Roberts lamented.
SRC SAYS IT'S TRYING HARD
However, Marie Iton, human resource and administrative manager of the SRC, explained that the SRC has been doing its best to have the workers receive their redundancies.
She said the Ministry had not allocated any funds to make the payments and has not indicated a time by which it will do so. Mrs. Iton said the redundancies were part of a restructuring exercise carried out at the SRC.
Efforts to get a comment from the Finance Ministry yesterday proved futile.
In the meantime, Mr. Roberts said he will be making a special appeal to officials at the Ministry to make the necessary provisions for the payments to be made as the workers cannot be allowed to continue suffering.
