M&CC withholds NIS, PAYE to pay salaries – Personnel Officer reveals

Jul 25, 2009 News

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In order to ensure that all staffers are paid their salaries, the Treasury Department of the Mayor and City Council of Georgetown has been delaying the payment of employees’ monthly NIS and credit union contributions.
This disclosure was made yesterday by Personnel Officer, Paulette Braithwaite.
Her comments came in response to concerns raised by a worker during an emergency staff meeting held in the Concert Hall of the municipality early yesterday morning.
The meeting was called by top officials of the municipality to address staffers’ concerns about the council’s inability to pay salaries on time.
The official pay date of the municipality is by the 25th day of each month, an obligation the municipality has not been able to keep for months.
The Personnel Officer said, yesterday, that because of the unwavering financial crisis at City Hall, Acting City Treasurer, Andrew Meredith, has for a number of months been forced to delay the payment of the necessary deductions workers’ salaries attract.
“We are in a crisis situation; things are not getting better so by not paying the deductions the Treasurer is trying to help you,” said an outspoken Braithwaite.
She however acknowledged that the course of action is incorrect and may be discontinued as early as this month. And should this be the case, she said that salaries will not be payable until the municipality is able to raise sufficient funds.
According to the Personnel Officer, the Acting Treasurer would usually pay the workers their net salaries. However, she noted that he has expressed concerns that failure to pay the deductions immediately could result in some difficulties in the long run, thus his intention to cease the practice.
She further explained that although the Acting Treasurer had been incorporating the delay approach, he would usually make the payments to the respective entities to which deductions are due when additional monies are received.
The municipality is tasked with garnering more than $70M on a monthly basis, mainly through the collection of rates and taxes which account for 80 percent of its revenue base to pay its more than 900 employees. According to reports from the municipality, only a fraction of the required taxes is paid up in order to allow the municipality to acquire the sufficient funds each month.
It is for this reason, the municipal Town Clerk, Mrs Yonette Pluck-Cort, said yesterday that the council is appealing to defaulting property owners to pay up their taxes. The municipality has since started to publish the names and addresses of defaulters in hope that they will satisfy their civic responsibility, Pluck-Cort added.
But despite several explanations of the municipal situation, a worker at the meeting likened the constant inability of the municipality to pay salaries to a ‘virus’. The worker speculated that dilemmas of such nature do not occur in other municipalities of the country.
However, the Personnel Officer highlighted that workers do not have to suffer financially as they could become engaged in some enterprising ventures once these do not conflict with their municipal working hours.
“You need to do something to help yourselves. Put out a tray; get help from the Credit Union. We have to do something to survive because we are in this crisis together.”
According to Public Relations Officer, Royston King, the municipality is doing everything within its power to ensure that workers get paid, at least by next week Tuesday.
He divulged that although the municipality finds itself in a crisis situation, it has not heeded the many suggestions to terminate the services of some staffers to be better able to manage.
As such, he cautioned the workers not to speak ill of the entity of their employment, even as he stressed his belief that “City Hall is a reflection of you. When you talk bad about the system you are talking bad about yourself,” he asserted.
However, the discussions at the meeting did not go down too well with all of the workers who were in attendance as some opted to leave the Concert Hall before the meeting was adjourned.
Last Tuesday, the Town Clerk reported that the municipality was experiencing severe cash-flow problems that have delayed the payment of salaries.
Last month more than 60 percent of the municipal workers who are represented by the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) engaged industrial action in the form of a sit-in to protest against the municipality’s inability to pay them.
The action was engaged, according to General Secretary of the Union, Carvil Duncan, because the municipality had not advised the union that it could not pay on time.
However, this time around the Town Clerk has ensured that both workers and the unions are being kept abreast of the municipal situation.

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