‘Pay day will be today’

TOBAGO House of Assembly Chief Secretary Orville London has again assured protesting Tobago workers that they would begin to receive payments today. Workers on two major infrastructural projects in Tobago staged protest action last Friday over four fortnights of wages owed to them. Police and fire service officers were summoned after employees on the Delaford Flood Damage and Englishman’s Bay projects blocked the roads with debris and burning garbage to demand payment. Both groups told the same story of “run-arounds” on the given pay dates. A checker at the Delaford Project told Newsday she feared for her life as she could no longer find excuses to appease angry workers.

She said the workers had planned to stage another protest yesterday if they had not been paid, but were too despondent to even go through with the plan after turning up for work and realising they had not been paid once again. London, who had given the assurance at Thursday’s weekly post-THA executive media conference that workers would be paid by Friday last, expressed disappointment that they received nothing. London described the situation as “very untenable” since $3 million had been made available to pay the workers several weeks ago. He told Newsday he was informed by THA Secretary for Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Whitney Alfred, that several glitches had been found while preparing the payment documents, but that errors had been corrected and the workers should begin receiving their wages today.