Hundreds in the protective services are still without long-promised COVID-19 pandemic pay and allowances, sparking discontent as delays stretch into a fourth year, Barbados TODAY has learnt.
The non-payment or delay of various types of pay, including for serving in acting positions and for working extra hours, is affecting police officers, firefighters and prison officers.
Prison officers are owed more than half a million dollars in outstanding pay for extended duties carried out during the pandemic, dating back four years, Superintendent of Prisons DeCarlo Payne disclosed for the first time on Tuesday.
He wants the matter resolved as soon as possible, he said.
The warders accused the authorities of neglecting their sacrifices despite repeated appeals.
But Payne said prison administrators had long fulfilled their part of the process and that distribution of the funds now rests with the Ministry of the Public Service (MPS).
He told Barbados TODAY: “There were two periods, and we have completed all two periods, and submitted all the paperwork… from April 2021 to March 2024, if I am not mistaken; and then April, May, June, July, August 2024. There were two separate periods. The first period was 500-and-something thousand dollars and the second period was 80-something thousand. But it all adds up to a period between April 2021 and August 2024.
“This [pay] was for when the staff were working the 12-hour duties during the COVID-19 arrangement that we had. We did what we had to do since late last year, and it’s now up to MPS, because the Ministry [of Home Affairs] would have done their part. We would normally send things through the ministry, where they would then go to the MPS; remember, MPS is the HR side of government, and they would deal with the actual pay… payrolls and so on.”
“I would like the whole thing resolved as soon as possible,” the prison boss continued. “I was the person who initiated the investigation into it [non-payment] when I took over the prison. So, we are just waiting until they come to the… as I said, all the computations have been done… we actually got back correspondence to that effect, and it’s just a matter of somebody out there signing off the release of the funds.”
In April, Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams told Barbados TODAY he was aware of the issue and expected a resolution soon.
“I am aware of the situation,” he said. “I can confirm that the calculations and reconciliations were completed and submitted by the Superintendent of Prisons to the Ministry of the Public Service. We expect to have this matter resolved to the satisfaction of all parties in the near future.”
But nearly four months later, the wait continues among prison staff.
Neither Abrahams nor Penelope Linton, the public service ministry’s director general of human resources, could be reached for an update on the prison warders’ situation.
Fire officers also reported that they have not been paid their acting allowance.
“It was drawn to my attention last night, that persons did not get paid acting allowances over the last month or so,” Corrie Bridgeman, the president of the Barbados Fire Service Association, told Barbados TODAY. “We have to make contact with the accountant to find out what is the issue.”
Bridgeman said there are several other outstanding issues which the association’s leadership intends to raise when it meets shortly with the fire department’s administration.
“We want to give them the opportunity first to look at them, before we can say anything else,” he said.
Police officers are also unhappy over non-payment of their flexible responsibility allowance, according to Hartley Reid, a former president of the Police Association of Barbados and first vice-president of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), who said the issue was recently brought to his attention.
“To my abject horror, I was in conversation only last week with a police officer who told me they are receiving a hell of a lot of problems with getting their flexible responsibility allowance. That is the allowance you pay after doing extra hours. And last year, when they had a hurricane that passed, they had not been paid at all for all the hours that they were in the police station and being on duty,” Reid told Barbados TODAY.
“So, I personally cannot understand, there is a full agreement between the police association and the government that was made back in 2003, when I was president; police officers will receive payment for all extra duties, extra hours performed. And every year, the government votes a budget, and it covers a flexible responsibility allowance. The Ministry of the Civil Service gave it that title, not me. It was agreed for the police, and subsequently, all the other services—hospital, prison, fire – they get a flexible responsibility allowance.
“And to hear now that there is a problem… I don’t know if there is a problem with the heads of departments, I don’t know if there is a problem with government unable to pay, I do not know what the problem is, but I know there is a problem. The fire told me that they are not being paid either.”
The current president of the Police Association Wendley Carter, Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce and Chief Fire Officer Errol Maynard did not immediately return calls for comment on the issue.
President of the Barbados Fire Service Association Corrie Bridgeman. (FP)
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