PHILIPSBURG–National Alliance (NA) Members of Parliament (MPs) Egbert Jurendy Doran and Christophe Emmanuel, during a press conference on Tuesday, expressed concern about the situation facing former Postal Services St. Maarten (PSS) workers who have been placed on the breadline and are without employment.
Doran said Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin had promised that the workers would receive alternative jobs in the civil service when their PSS positions became redundant. He said this has not been realised to date and the former workers are suffering. He said the workers had been relieved of their duties and were supposed to have started new jobs as of October last year, but are still without employment.
The former workers approached Doran on the matter a few weeks ago. He said he had requested a parliamentary meeting in mid-January to get answers from the prime minister on the way forward. Some of the workers had been working with PSS for as long as 29 years, and have financial obligations such as mortgages and children in school to take care of.
Doran said it was “disturbing” to see this matter swept under the rug. “They [the former PSS workers – Ed.] were told during a soft opening of the new location on Pond Island that they would get jobs. A month ago, they were told it is not the prime minister, but that it was the other members in the Council of Ministers who don’t want to assist them,” Doran said.
He said also that workers had been told that if they get employment in the civil service, they would have to give up the years-of-service pay-out from PSS to which they are entitled. However, he said this is not correct and workers should not have to give up the funds to which they are entitled.
If one worker, for example, gives up his or her pay-out to take on a job on a one-year contract and the new employer decides to let him/her go, then that worker would be without his/her pay-out and a job, and would have essentially “thrown away 29 years of service.”
He said one worker who had applied for a job in the civil service had been told that they could not get the job because they had been on the PM’s priority list for employment, and now the worker has neither the job promised by the PM nor the job that had been applied for in the civil service.
He said also that the former workers are being paid their lump sums in portions, are being paid late and are in need of solutions to their plight.
Emmanuel said Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunications (TEATT) Stuart Johnson had been on the PSS board and when the company had been having issues, Curaçao had been “allowed” to come in and “go with all the cars and computers and St. Maarten did nothing.”
Emmanuel said that while the PSS workers were being neglected, everyone is going about their daily lives as if nothing is wrong. He said the request for a meeting can at least be responded to.
“You have one person [Chairperson of Parliament Sarah Wescot-Williams] who bends and twists the rule to how they see fit and I have had enough of this. The Post Office meeting is a serious meeting and it is a serious meeting because they are playing with the lives of people.
“It cannot be that government can find funds for international companies to come and do jobs in St. Maarten, but cannot find monies for their own people,” Emmanuel said, alluding to Smith Orloff and Associates insurance loss adjusters who he said had been hired by government to assess the Hurricane Irma damage sustained by government properties.
Emmanuel said that while Henderson International had been hired for the job, its contract had been ended by the current government and Smith Orloff had been hired, which in turn hired a St. Maarten-based company to carry out its task.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/85179-na-mps-want-solution-for-former-pss-staffers
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