THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is in the process of examining and regularizing benefits owed to all past employees who left the municipality’s employ during the year 2015, and on Wednesday issued a call for all such employees to visit the Human Resource Manager.
Persons are required to walk with national identification cards or a valid form of identification to facilitate the smooth flow of the process, a press release from the municipality’s Public Relations Officer, Debra Lewis, relayed.

When contacted, however, Mayor Ubraj Narine said the edict is yet another case of the administration doing as it pleases without consulting the 30-member Council which should be issuing the directives of the body.

Narine said outside of seeing a copy of the statement being shared by the public, he was never apprised of the development.

“Ask the HR because I know nothing about it, I have no knowledge about it,” Narine expressed on Wednesday.

“Sometimes it bothers me but I can’t do anything; the HR, she has a different view of how she manages things without any form of policies. Again, I say that as administration and council, we need to work together to build the city and get the city in order, but I am not aware of these things, no one says anything to me.”

Narine’s continued frustration with local government officers acting without directives from the Council has been well recorded since he took up the position of Mayor in January 2019.
Councillor Denroy Tudor, who is a member of the Council’s Human Resource Management Committee, also said that a decision was never taken at the level of Committee.

He noted that the last discussion on the issue at a statutory meeting only amounted to the Council being informed that it was up to date on the payments of National Insurance Scheme (NIS) contributions for employees.

Tudor said he is not certain how many employees are owed for 2015.
The M&CC, which is heavily in debt, has, over the years, come under fire for lack of remittance of employee deductions to various entities as well as complaints from former employees about payments owed to them.

Last year August, it was revealed that the municipality owed NIS over $218 million.
As a result of recommendations from the CoI, the M&CC was ordered to pay the remittances and all owed employees.

Last year, some 35 retired employees banded together and formed a pensioners association to help lobby their cause after they had not received their pensions and retroactive money that they said they were entitled to.