Committee formed to query VSEP payments

IN response to numerous complaints from former daily paid workers of Caroni (1975) Ltd, a joint investigative committee will soon be appointed to deal with reports of discrepancies in the payment of Voluntary Separation of Employment Packages(VSEP) cheques.

The committee — comprising representatives from All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union (ATSGWTU), representatives of other unions, together with officials of the former sugar company — is expected to carry out queries of the cheques by the middle of this week. Over 9,000 daily and monthly paid workers at the State-owned company collected their VSEP cheques, amounting to some $800 million over the long Emancipation weekend.

However, according to ATSGWTU General-Secretary, Pooran Rattan, workers were disputing the Company’s formula used to calculate VSEP payments, including “rate of pay and years of service of individual workers.” “Several workers are saying that the Company failed to honour upgraded rates of pay agreed to by the Union and the Company,” Rattan said. He added the Union would be “going all out” to ensure that workers received their “just dues” from their former employer. But, while a senior Caroni official confirmed that a committee had been agreed to by the Company, he pointed out that over 1,000 VSEP queries had already been settled by the Company.

The official, who spoke to Newsday on the basis of anonymity, said that just over 500 queries still had to be resolved by the Company. The official also disclosed that Caroni would maintain several offices for the next six months as a “non-trading company” to fulfil “our obligations and liabilities” to creditors. And while the official was hesitant about revealing any further details, he said the Company’s management structure would continue to function, until all of Caroni’s operations had been officially “shut down”.