Labour Department launches investigation – source

Non-payment to West Demerara guards

By Shemuel Fanfair

Several guards in the West Demerara area are struggling to provide for themselves and families, since they have not been paid their salaries in almost three months. Guyana Times however, has learnt that the Social Protection Ministry’s Labour Department has launched an investigation into the matter of these guards’ payment.

These guards are attached to the Sentinel Security Inc., which provides guard services to many schools and medical facilities in Region Three (Essequibo-Islands/West Demerara).
According to a source familiar with the probe, the Labour Department has been meeting with some of the workers across the Region in response to their request for Government’s intervention, since they have been owed over an extended period of time.
It is understood that after several meetings, some of the guards on the West Coast of Demerara received payments.
Many of the guards were former workers of the Wales Sugar Estate, where operations ended in December 2016. These ex-Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) employees were already facing a situation wherein they could barely make ends meet.
Some of the dismissed sugar workers were able to secure permanent jobs only as guards, and only earlier this year. However, after enduring months of not being remunerated for their services, they are opting against going public with their identities because they fear victimisation. Nevertheless, on condition of anonymity, one of the guards who are owed claimed that his water service has recently been disconnected because he could not afford to pay for the facility.
“Every day hard! We deh pon we bearings here, because we ain’t got nothing coming in. We really depend on it (being paid what is owed). My water cut off here now. We can’t pay the bill, it’s $5,000. We tell them man we ain’t get pay, and them say them ain’t business with that. Is good thing we getting some showers,” a former sugar worker turned guard told Guyana Times.
“The supervisor tell us he ain’t know when we would get pay. Them say Friday, but when you ask back, he say them ain’t get through with nothing as yet, and we going into three months now,” the worker, who expressed great frustration, added.
When the stalled payments were first revealed, this newspaper contacted Sentinel, but the guard service said it was up to the Region Three Administration to effect payments. As such, Guyana Times called the Region Three Regional Executive Officer (REO) late last month, and he gave assurances that the matter would have been shortly resolved. REO Jaikarran also related that the region was in discussion with the Finance Ministry to end the non-payment.
“It is not a shortage of money, but there were some difficulties and challenges we faced in terms of the releases… That matter is going to be resolved in quick time,” Jaikarran told this newspaper in late August.
Guyana Times recently reported on some unpaid guards saying that their supervisor informed them that they would be paid by Friday, August 31, 2018. However, that was almost 2 weeks ago. To date, most of those workers are having to cope without their due salaries.