To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is threat­en­ing ‘mas’ protest ac­tion dur­ing the is­land’s Pa­rade of the Bands on Sun­day if salaries for 2000 dai­ly rat­ed work­ers are not paid by the end of the week.

At a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Mor­ris said he had re­ceived mul­ti­ple calls from dai­ly rat­ed work­ers at the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries, and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment about late salaries. The work­ers claimed they had not been paid for a month.

Mor­ris pledged to gath­er all the af­fect­ed work­ers and head to Scar­bor­ough for the main event of the Car­ni­val sea­son to stage a protest. He said the un­paid work­ers are pre­pared to cross the stage at the main judg­ing point.

“Please don’t let Fri­day pass and them peo­ple ain’t get they pay. Be­cause if you want mas, we will make mas on Sun­day. If you re­al­ly want to see mas I will stand up with these CEPEP and dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers. I would ask them to reach you by the stage on the sea and we would re­al­ly see mass,” he warned.

Is­sues sur­round­ing the time­ly pay­ment of work­ers at that Di­vi­sion are not new. In 2017, for­mer chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles com­mit­ted to in­tro­duc­ing a sys­tem that would make late pay­ment to the dai­ly-paid work­ers a thing of the pass. How­ev­er, six years lat­er the Di­vi­sion con­tin­ues to strug­gle with late pay­ments.

Mor­ris ques­tioned Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ca­pac­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age and mon­i­tor the THA’s fi­nances be­fore crit­i­cis­ing him for his in­abil­i­ty to man­age the THA purse.

“You, Mr Chief Sec­re­tary, who is the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, have not made it a pri­or­i­ty that these peo­ple get paid. But you know what you’re mak­ing a pri­or­i­ty? You are en­sur­ing that any­thing that ben­e­fits you and your ad­min­is­tra­tion gets paid.

“When sec­re­tary have to fly out and go on their fan­cy trip they get their cheques to go be­fore hand so why these work­ers are work­ing in the hot son can’t get their pay?

“While the Di­vi­sion is un­able to pay their work­ers, you have a sec­re­tary who get off on a trip that have no val­ue, some con­fer­ence about con­nec­tiv­i­ty. More and more we are see­ing this be­com­ing a norm.”

A se­nior To­ba­go of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia the protest­ing group would not be es­cort­ed off the pa­rade route since tra­di­tion­al mas dur­ing the Pa­rade of the Bands al­lows for sim­i­lar demon­stra­tions. The of­fi­cer clar­i­fied that as long as the group reg­is­ters and dis­plays plac­ards while walk­ing along the route or across the stage on the sea, there would be no vi­o­la­tion or dis­rup­tion.

At­tempts to reach Di­vi­sion Sec­re­tary Trevor James and As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Joel Samp­son were un­suc­cess­ful, and Au­gus­tine could not be reached for com­ment.

James re­cent­ly faced con­tro­ver­sy af­ter char­ter­ing a pri­vate US air­craft from Mar­tinique to To­ba­go for him­self and three oth­ers fol­low­ing a con­fer­ence on the is­land from Oc­to­ber 18-20. James jus­ti­fied the de­ci­sion by stat­ing that all flights had been can­celed due to a Hur­ri­cane Tam­my alert in Mar­tinique, and he had an ur­gent fam­i­ly mat­ter to at­tend to.