The students had called for an investigation into the matter, which has been allowed to fester almost two weeks after the closure of the programme.
While sources suggested that the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Housing was experiencing a “cash flow crisis,” chairperson of the secretariat for the employment scheme, Oral Lafleur, told the Nassau Guardian yesterday that a full settlement would be made this week to the 260 students, representing 20 per cent of the 1,300 persons employed in the summer programme.
Mr Lafleur apologised for late distribution of the cheques and explained that technical difficulties experienced within the Treasury Department and a shortage of staff in the programme made the situation “unavoidable.”
“I would be the first to admit that it was perhaps partly our fault for not having the system in place like we would have liked it to be. The committee was put together just before the start of the programme; however, we have been able to collect all the relevant information and time worked and payment would be made,” Mr Lafleur told the Nassau Guardian.
He dismissed the suggestion that the ministry was unable to pay the students because of a lack of funds. He said the government had allocated $1.9 million to the programme, “and we are pretty close to that area.”
The ministry came under heavy fire from angry students who had not been paid, and parents who thought their children were duped into working for no pay.
They claimed that no one at the ministry could provide them with any answers, leaving students short of money to buy school supplies.
The arranged payment date was August 11.
“Now, the agreed bargain or contract was after this camp was over, we were to be paid. The problem is we are getting in, we are doing what we are supposed to do on time, we are coming back out and here it is August 11 and we are looking for our money – and nothing,” one college student who participated in the programme told the Guardian.
A forty-one year-old mother of one of the students who worked at a camp at the Gerald Cash Primary School complained bitterly to the Guardian.
The mother, a civil servant who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said her daughter walked out of the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Housing in tears after she was given the “run around” by its personnel.
Former Prime Minister and FNM leader Hubert Ingraham took a shot at the government for the late payments.
“They have announced all over this land they have hired all these young children but now school is going to open in another week or two and they can’t get paid. Where is the money?” he asked.
However, despite the cheque delay, Mr Lafleur said the camps – 89 in total – were very successful and ran without any major incident.
He promised that the hiccups experienced would be a thing of the past next year.
By: LAURA MATTHEWS and KEVA LIGHTBOURNE, The Nassau Guardian
