Public Infrastructure staff protests for 10% increase

While public servants across the country will this month receive Government’s promised retroactive 1 to 10 per cent increase, workers at the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) Special Project Unit, will lose out.
Workers of the unit took to the streets on Monday, protesting what they said is downright disadvantage and abuse of power by those in authority. They told Guyana Times that they are utterly fed up of the system robbing them of any opportunity of a decent livelihood.

The more than 100 employees, working under contract with the Ministry, said they don’t know where else to turn for help, as the very system they are working for, is also against them.
Their concerns border around their wages and salaries and particularly safety on the job. Of utmost concern for them is news that they will not be paid the announced 10 per cent increase for public servants.
“They promise us better minimum wages and so. I mean to say, all the other workers get that $50,000. We are the only set of people who ain’t getting. Civil aviation get, airport get, transport get. And it is rough. That is not right. All of us have bills to pay, especially me”, one worker said.
“All of we got children, some of we have five, six children to maintain and take to school and it is very hard. We need for them to at least make some changes to be made”. He said the junior minister had promised to take the matter to Cabinet, but up until now, there has been no word.
“Nobody aint looking into it”, another worker said.
The workers said they have been sitting silently saying nothing since last December, when they were denied the $50,000 across-the-board payment. According to the employees, while the work is great, the salary remains under $50,000.
The workers are hurting, saying that they are the ones that are called upon to complete unfinished tasks by private contractors. One such project is the D’Urban Park site, which was left unfinished, with billions of dollars already spent by the first contractor.
Another employee working in the hot mix section said he has been working in that area for over four years. In the hot mix area, workers are required to sometimes manually lay out the hot tar-mixed-bricks on the area and then pan it out, standing on the heated worksite with work booths that do not reach the required standard.
“We are not getting gears. Maybe one time a year we will get it and the next year we will not get it at all. The President needs to urgently look into this, because we can’t take it no more”.
“Majority of the project that council (M&CC) suppose to do, it not doing the work, we have to end up turning back and do the work.”
They said the situation is so sickening, that persons who have spent decades in the unit, come off, many with injuries, but receive nothing at their retirement.
“We don’t want that, we want that we are working a certain number of years under the government, at least we get something when we come off, because it is very hard on we.”
Another worker said, “I work here for 11 years and nothing has changed. All that was changed was the name of this Ministry; otherwise, everything has been the same. The President is passing the instruction to all the Ministers of all the Ministries, but they not doing it here.”
Efforts to contact both Minister of, and Minister within the Ministry of Public Infrastructure David Patterson and Annette Ferguson, respectively, were unsuccessful. (Alexis Rodney)