RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Garbage col­lec­tion in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion could halt as Christ­mas ap­proach­es, due to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by dai­ly-paid work­ers from the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC), who are protest­ing un­paid al­lowances.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion will be­gin on Tues­day.

The work­ers—in­clud­ing dri­vers, labour­ers, and san­i­ta­tion staff, are rep­re­sent­ed by the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

In late No­vem­ber, NUGFW's Labour Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, Ja­son Gor­don, sent a no­tice of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion to PDRC's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Satragie Usha Ma­haraj, claim­ing that work­ers have not re­ceived their owed pay­ments.

Gor­don said that the PDRC had re­fused to pay out­stand­ing over­time and trav­el al­lowances and had breached the pro­mo­tion pol­i­cy. He al­so high­light­ed that work­ers had not been pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

"The Union has at­tempt­ed to ne­go­ti­ate in good faith with PDRC man­age­ment, but they have re­fused to fol­low in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices as out­lined in the 2011-2013 col­lec­tive agree­ment," Gor­don stat­ed.

He con­firmed that the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion would start on Tues­day and con­tin­ue un­til fur­ther no­tice.

When con­tact­ed, PDRC Chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj ex­pressed sup­port for the work­ers, stat­ing that the coun­cil wants all work­ers to be paid for their com­plet­ed work.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the PDRC is await­ing fund re­leas­es from the Min­istry be­fore it can set­tle the out­stand­ing over­time and ar­rears.