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Berbice sweeper/cleaners still without pay
Sweeper/Cleaners in Berbice have not yet been paid for January. To their surprise, too, their names have been removed from the respective schools’ pay sheets and they were told that manual pay sheets would be prepared.
No timeframe was given by the Regional Accounting Unit of Region Six for the payout to the employees. Sweeper/Cleaners are contract workers. Their names would usually appear on the teachers’ pay sheets and they would receive salaries. This month, this did not happen.
When head teachers turned up to uplift the pay sheets at the Accounting units, the names of the sweeper/cleaners attached to the various Berbice schools were not included. Additionally, the head teachers were told that a payout would be forthcoming but no date was given.
As a result, the sweeper/cleaners are furious. They have taken the issue of their late payments in salaries to any willing ear and they now say that they need representation by some kind of trade union.
“I am not comfortable with our names taken off the pay sheet. We have our children depending on us and you have to wait for this money that cannot really benefit the family.
“I would quit the job and find something else to do”, said one angry cleaner.
The cleaner believes they need representation “because we are not represented in any way and then, working for such small amount of money- you have to pay National Insurance Scheme (NIS) out of that [and] feed children. Sometimes, we don’t get paid, like in August and July. That is real bad, the way we are being treated, not like humans—we are being treated like animals”.
Another cleaner, said, “You have children to look after—you have to find money to buy textbooks and such to come to school and you have bills to pay out of that small amount of money that they paying you.
And this work is very hard; we try our best to do the work and still they take off we names from the pay sheet and they are not treating we the right way they supposed to”.
Kaieteur News understands that the sweeper/cleaners did not benefit from the five per cent pay out to public servants in December. Several efforts to contact the Chief Accountant of Region six proved futile.
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