South daily paid workers protest

The building, which is over 40 years old, is falling apart and often floods. Yesterday’s protest by the workers who assembled in front the offices, also condemned the abandoning of a project in which a building is under construction for new offices and work stations.

The workers shouted slogans as they chastised the SFCC for abandoning the building’s construction and allowing it to become run down and infested with rats, dogs and vagrants.

General Secretary of the Contractors and General Workers’ Trade Union (CAGWTU), Ainsley Matthews, said yesterday that the workers have been holding on since October 2005, to promises made by SFCC’s CEO Marlene Coudray, for completion of the building’s first phase. Matthews said that he was surprised that the SFCC’s Public Health Department had not deemed the workers’ old offices a health hazard.

He said that the union had repeatedly complained to Coudray about falling ceilings, leaking roofs and flooding work stations.

Ermin De Bique, assistant general secretary of CAGWTU, told Newsday at the demonstration yesterday that water flows through the “welding station” each time the rain falls. This poses a threat to workers in the electrical department.

Most of the garbage trucks, she said, do not have “standing platforms.” Forced to store their tools inside the garbage trucks, De Bique said, sanitation workers are often at risk on the road.

CEO Coudray said yesterday that the estimated completion date for the first phase of the building was June. However, it could not be accomplished, she added, because of the lack of materials.