Mahabir-Wyatt: Pandemic leave confusing

CHAIRMAN and managing director of Personnel Management Services Diana Mahabir-Wyatt is describing as confusing the government’s decision to approve covid19 backpay for public servants. She said public servants who were sent home would have received full pay while at home.

“This includes permanent public officers, employees of regional corporations, permanent hourly and daily paid workers. The people who would not already have been paid were part-time or casual workers, and seasonal workers, and I don’t think there were many of those, because at that time I don’t think we had many seasonal workers who would have been called out. This sounds good but I doubt it applies to very many people. It doesn’t.”

Mahabir-Wyatt also queried where funds to pay the public servants would come from, especially in light of the Prime Minister’s recent statements that the government’s coffers are running low and the country cannot afford another lockdown. She said from the beginning of this year, most ministries were told they had to reduce their budgets by ten per cent to make up for the drop in oil prices which occurred just before the pandemic announcement.

She questioned the logic of the payment at this point, especially as grants should have been given out to those public servants who were not receiving full salaries during the stay-at-home period.

“Churches and other organisations were given grants to given money to help those who needed to buy food, and we’re coming to the end of that period. When people went to apply for the grants in the early part of the stay-at-home period, they were told their applications could not be processed because the public servants had been sent home, and could not therefore generate the necessary bureaucracy to process the grants.”

She said she would be very interested to find out where the money is going to come from and who exactly would be being paid.

Mahabir-Wyatt also enquired whether the government would include pandemic leave in the Minimum Wages Act, which provides sick leave and vacation leave, and bring it before Parliament.

“It would then apply to workers in the private sector, which are the majority of people who work in Trinidad. If the government then says that private sector employers, especially small businesses, have to retroactively pay workers who had to stay home because the government decreed that everyone had to stay home, then we’re dealing with a totally different philosophy and policy. What government is saying is that we said you couldn’t work but now we’re saying that we’re not going to pay you for the work you didn’t do, your employer is going to have to pay you. There’s no logic to that and it’s going to cost a lot of businesses the business if that becomes a legal obligation.”