With the employment cost at City Hall accounting for more than 65% of its April expenditure the question of just how many functioning staff members are at the municipality has become an issue which united councillors across party lines.
At yesterday’s statutory meeting an issue which Councillor Heston Bostwick has made into a personal crusade was referred to the council’s Human Resource Committee for an investigation after the Human Resource and other departments appeared to disagree as to how many sanitation workers are on the council payroll.
“‘For me sitting here as the Mayor there is a cookup going on but it ain’t got salt…We can’t pay people who are not working here,” Mayor Ubraj Narine declared during the meeting even as Head of the Human Resource Committee and Town Clerk (acting) Sharon Harry-Monroe cautioned him against publicly suggesting that impropriety exists.
The matter first came to attention at the April 23 meeting when Bostwick stood to question the staffing of the Solid Waste Department.
He said that the number of sanitation workers and street orderlies “fluctuated” from month to month much to the frustration of Solid Waste Director Walter Narine.
Narine in responding to Bostwick argued that all his reports were consistent and in fact the February and March reports showed the same number of workers. Bostwick was not appeased and requested a report from the Human Resource Department as to the number of sanitation workers employed by council.
That report presented at the last statutory meeting said that a total of 110 sanitation workers were employed at council with 47 sanitation workers and 3 street orderlies within the Solid Waste Department.
However this number was different from the number recorded in the April 2019 Solid Waste report which stated that 38 sanitation workers and 10 street orderlies function within the department.
Narine reported that his actual staff strength corresponded with the numbers in his report rather than that of the Human Resource Officer Pauline Braithwaite.
He however argued that since the two categories work at the same payment scale, in cases where the city trucks are non-functioning the sanitation workers who normally man those trucks are asked to perform the duties of street orderlies and manually clear the city of waste.
The Clerk of Markets in turn reported that his department employed 22 sanitation officer though the HR report claimed 24 while the Public Health Department reported that though eight such workers are on their payroll one has recently died and another recently retired. Sanitation workers are also employed in the Engineering Department.
Bostwick said that rather than disproving his allegation the report from HR has raised more questions.
“Within this category of workers there continues to be a fluctuation of numbers…which has me concerned because reports should be consistent especially since there is no report of retrenchment or reduction in quota,” he stressed.
His concerns were supported by former Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, Chair of the Council’s new Audit Committee Denroy Tudor and PPP/C Councillor Bishram Kuppen.
As Bostwick sought to have deputy HR officer Michelle Smith explain the discrepancy in the numbers presented, her request for “time” led to an outburst from several sections of the Horseshoe table.
“Why is it that when councillors ask for certain thing the Heads of Departments can’t answer us?” Mayor Narine questioned noting that the questions were asked more than a month ago.
Chase-Green criticized Smith’s attempt to consult the draft 2019 budget noting that the Budget would give you actual strength last year and proposed strength but it won’t give you staff strength now.
Tudor suggested that his committee audit the HR department and by extension the staffing of council.
Kuppen supported this suggestion noting that he has long requested a “manpower audit”.
“I know for a fact the internal auditor has said that they had begun a manpower audit so perhaps that information should be turned over to the committee,” he argued.
In the end a decision was taken to submit the matter to the Human Resource Committee for investigation with committee chair Oscar Clarke committing to forward the results to the Audit Committee.
