After meeting with the Labour Department just over a month ago, former Fly Jamaica workers remain concerned about the lack of progress in getting them paid monies owed to them by the now decertified airline.
On June 11th, over 50 of the airline’s former workers met with Labour Advisor Francis Carryl, a labour officer and a lawyer at the Department of Labour of the Ministry of Social Protection on Brickdam, in Georgetown, after being called for a meeting due to the non-payment of outstanding wages.
Despite spending more than an hour in the meeting, many of the workers were not satisfied with the outcome as the only conclusion that was made was for them to return during the following week to give written statements.
However, since then, only a number of workers have been called to visit the Department to give their statements, and this, the workers have said, is a cause for concern since it is an urgent matter.
Speaking with Sunday Stabroek yesterday, Gina McCamley, who worked at the company for more than a year, related that while the Department had said that they would call her to give a statement, over a month later she has not received any communication.
“I haven’t heard anybody mention it at all… We received individual letters of redundancy from the company three days after the meeting with the ministry and it said that we will be paid but no date was provided,” McCamley explained.
She said the fact that there has been no communication from the Department is “quite surprising” given the fact that the matter they were told that they would have firm answers.
Another worker, Teasha Corbin, said she is only interested in knowing when they are going to be paid.
“We have never had this behaviour before from Fly Jamaica. We have never missed a pay date,” she said.
Corbin was last paid in November, despite working until March this year. She had noted that she is hoping the government would give the company the assistance it needs to pay monies owed to the former employees.
Other workers who did not want to be named said that they have visited the Labour Department to give statements but were not told anything conclusive.
“We just went and explained everything but we weren’t told anything and we unsure of what’s going to happen now,” one of the workers said.
While some of the former employees were able to find new jobs, the majority of them are still unemployed.
On March 29th, the company announced that due to the lack of aircraft and the impact it has had on its financial position, it had no alternative but to make all employees redundant, effective from March 31st, 2019.
The airline also owes customers whose flights were cancelled in wake of last November’s crash landing of a Fly Jamaica plane at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. Last month, Director General of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, Egbert Field, had related that officials from the company met with the Consumers Affairs Department of the Ministry of Business and had made a commitment to refund all monies. The airline was also decertified last month in Kingston, Jamaica, and according to Field, as a result, it was also decertified here in Guyana.
