Dear Editor,
Recently the Human Resources Department (HRD) of GPL met with some staff members and informed them that they (staff members) had monies paid to them in their salaries to which they were not entitled. According to the HRD this has been happening since 2003. The amount by which each employee was overpaid in some cases is in excess of $700,000 with the overall amount totalling around seventy million dollars. Furthermore, the employees were told of an amount they will have to pay monthly to GPL until the overpaid money has been repaid. The employees were asked to sign a document authorizing GPL to deduct the agreed amounts from their salaries.
The question to be answered is how come this happened when there exists active Finance Accounts and Payroll departments which are supposed to be headed by qualified personnel. We can understand and accept that such mistakes could have occurred for one or two months unnoticed by these departments, but for five years?
Can the HRD say how it will deal with persons who have been severed from the company’s employ and might have been overpaid? PAYE, NIS and pension plan deductions have been computed based on one’s taxable income.
I suppose that these various contributions have been already submitted to the relevant agencies, will GPL ask that a refund be made by these agencies? With the level of incompetence in this financial department it is possible that the fuel suppliers and contractors are being overpaid. If I were one of those overpaid employees I would not have signed any document agreeing to repay that allegedly overpaid money until I had a qualified accountant check all my earnings transactions for that period. Remember the company cannot deduct monies from one’s salary arbitrarily save and except deductions that are mandated by law. Any other form of deduction has to be authorized.
It is time therefore for the Prime Minister who holds responsibility for the electricity sector to carry out a thorough investigation into the entire operations of GPL.
Yours faithfully,
D. Carryl
