Hundreds of millions of dollars are owed to MTS by various State agencies, resulting in the company experiencing challenges in paying salaries to its workers these past few months. The Estate Police Association is sounding the alarm, that the livelihoods of over 4000 workers are now on the line. Rynessa Cutting reports.
00:00Hundreds of millions of dollars are owed to MTS by various state agencies, resulting in the company experiencing challenges in paying salaries to its workers these past few months.
00:10The Estate Police Association is sounding the alarm that the livelihoods of over 4,000 workers are now on the line.
00:17Renessa Cutting reports.
00:19Amid recent job losses across the forestry division, CPEP and URP, comes word that yet another government program could be under threat.
00:30This time, it's the national maintenance training and security company MTS, which falls under the Ministry of Public Utilities.
00:38The company is reportedly facing serious cash flow issues and is unable to consistently pay staff salaries.
00:46The only information is that the accounts have been frozen.
00:50So we're not even sure that salaries for this fortnight, for the fortnight coming up here, will be paid.
00:56We're not even sure about that.
00:57So this is a crisis that needs urgent attention.
01:01The Estate Police Association says for the past three months, workers have received partial pay.
01:08The past three months, the monies that were remitted ignored, in fact, from the salaries of the police officers, the security officers, and even for maintenance people in MTS to go to the different banks and credit unions and pay for the health plan has not been remitted
01:30because NMTS is saying that they have been operating on overdraft and the overdraft facility is now finished and that they could only pay net salary, not gross salary.
01:47The association president notes with concern, however, that the workers' pay slips continue to reflect deductions, although the remittances are not being made, resulting in the health plan being suspended and creditors not being paid.
02:04We don't want a situation where today or tomorrow and if somebody needs urgent medical attention and because the money has not been remitted to the health plan, you don't want a situation where somebody's in urgent need of a loan.
02:21We have people who have been sent credit letters by the creditors, you know, so people are really in sense.
02:30They're in a rock and a hard place, right?
02:33If you don't have the money, all it will pay is exactly that.
02:36Now, we are saying to them that this could be fraud, this could be deemed, whether or not we are able to prove that,
02:44but the fact is that this thing is something that has risen out before.
02:52But Richardson acknowledges that NMTS's financial woes are public record and are no fault of the companies.
03:00As state agencies owe NMTS hundreds of millions in receivables.
03:05The Ministry of Education was the largest debt of over $300 million.
03:09Other ministries, the Ministry of Legal Affairs, the police service, all the credit, all the things that they pay for our service and they don't pay on time.
03:18NMTS has consistently been having to go and beg for money, beg for money.
03:23He's also questioning the value placed on NMTS workers.
03:28NMTS was the only thing that was offered, even the 2%, right?
03:33Not that we wanted the 2% for NMTS, right?
03:36Of course, we didn't want the 2% for them.
03:37But it didn't even have the decency to offer the 4%.
03:43Why?
03:45Is it that because NMTS is a company that employs what we call minimum wage workers, security officers,
03:56police officers, people in maintenance?
03:59Is it that?
04:00And we have raised the issue whether NMTS is being set up for privatization.
04:07Right?
04:08We know that there are a number of security companies outside there who have designs on those contracts at NMTS.
04:15TV6 News has reached out to both NMTS and the Minister of Public Utilities for responses.
04:21Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
04:25Well, in response, Public Utilities Minister Barry Padaroth tells TV6,
04:30the government inherited, quote, a financial mess at NMTS, with outstanding receivables amounting to over $700 million.
04:39Padaroth says this has impacted the HR matters of the company, but they have been attempting to reconcile the matter.
04:45The minister says he has spoken to the Minister of Finance, who has given an assurance that it is being addressed with a view to bringing a resolution to the matter.
Be the first to comment