THA tackles outstanding gratuities, increments, severance pay

THE THA is moving swiftly to address the issue of outstanding gratuities and increments across all of its divisions.

Chief Secretary Farley Augustine made the announcement on Wednesday at the close of the THA’s two-day executive and administrative heads meeting at the Shaw Park Cultural Complex.

Chief Administrator Ethlyn John, administrators and technical advisers and officers from the various divisions attended the meeting.

Augustine said the assembly will be focusing on outstanding gratuities for contracted officers and arrears of increment for public officers.

They also intend to look at severance benefits for those who are retiring as daily-rated workers and a proposed strategy to liquidate and bring gratuities and arrears up to date and current.

“That is a huge problem and I am sure many of you looking on will be happy to know that very soon we will announce a strategy by which you will get your gratuities, your increments, get your severance benefits in the most efficient manner,” he said.

“But the goal is to bring it all up to date, so that going forward we are not trying to treat with a large backlog as we see in some divisions such as education, community development, youth development and sport.

“That also includes treating with overtime payments for some categories of workers such as those in the division of tourism and elsewhere.”

Earlier, Augustine said the intention of the meeting was to reprioritise its agenda for fiscal 2023 based on predicted income flow from its $2.4 billion allocation from the national budget.

“This exercise became extremely important following the $1.4 billion shortfall in our parliamentary allocation.”

Augustine recalled that in June, he had requested $3.9 billion from central government to manage the island’s affairs over the next year.

“This was the lowest ask from the Tobago House of Assembly within the last decade, to fund the proposed work programme of the THA for fiscal 2023, but the THA was only allocated approximately $2.5 billion.”

He said owing to the shortfall, the THA had to recalibrate its budget.

Augustine added that later this month he will present a stream of projects that they intend to execute across the fiscal year “so that you will be at home and able to create your own checklist and be able to check off with us – that is accountability, that is transparency as we deliver on these projects.”

Saying the THA reshaped its work plan for each division, Augustine said a clear pathway for cross-divisional collaboration was also established.

“So divisions are no longer operating in silos but we will have a case where divisions will collaborate on some projects, sometimes two or three divisions coming together to execute some much needed projects.”