Dra­ma erupt­ed at City Hall yes­ter­day as dai­ly-paid work­ers stormed the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC), de­mand­ing over­due salaries, say­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have been press­ing them for pay­ments.

Chant­i­ng union songs, the group—led by Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Er­mine De Bique-Meade—crowd­ed the en­trance be­fore mov­ing in­to the lob­by. Their protest gained sup­port from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment coun­cil­lors Tere­sa Lynch and Naigum Joseph, who joined in cho­rus, clap­ping along as ten­sions rose.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress al­der­man Vil­iana Ra­moutars­ingh then hand­ed her phone to De Bique-Meade, with Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen on the line. Ameen as­sured work­ers that she was head­ing to her min­istry’s head of­fice, lo­cat­ed at Kent House, Mar­aval, to sign off on funds to pay them, while crit­i­cis­ing San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris for not rais­ing the is­sue with her.

Par­ris coun­tered that SFCC CEO Heather Craw­ford had al­ready flagged the mat­ter with the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, call­ing it an ad­min­is­tra­tive de­lay.

Al­though work­ers left with promis­es, De Bique-Meade warned that au­thor­i­ties have un­til 10 am to­mor­row be­fore ac­tion es­ca­lates. She said around 800 work­ers were af­fect­ed, an­gry at be­ing sin­gled out when oth­ers were paid ear­ly. Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion salaries were is­sued on Sep­tem­ber 15, while SFCC salaries due on Sep­tem­ber 19 re­main out­stand­ing for the third con­sec­u­tive fort­night.

Ameen told work­ers she on­ly learnt of the prob­lem yes­ter­day morn­ing when Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyer El­der con­tact­ed her af­ter speak­ing with SFCC staff. She said she had no pa­per­work on her desk up to Fri­day, blam­ing a late vire­ment from the cor­po­ra­tion.

“I im­me­di­ate­ly en­quired from my PS, and she told me some­thing came this morn­ing, so I am hus­tling to go down to the min­istry to sign off on that so that you all can get your pay. But I have nev­er even re­ceived a re­quest from the may­or, say­ing, ‘Min­is­ter, what is go­ing on with our funds, our funds are late,’ or any­thing like that,” Ameen said.

With Par­ris and coun­cil­lors present, she added, “I do not know if he feels that be­cause he is a PNM and I am a UNC, he can­not con­tact me, but my com­mu­ni­ca­tion is open with all may­ors and chair­men.”

She promised to re­solve the re­cur­ring prob­lem, say­ing a cheque was ex­pect­ed yes­ter­day.

But De Bique-Meade said work­ers were dis­sat­is­fied, as Craw­ford had told them she was in con­stant con­tact with the min­istry.

“We can­not un­der­stand be­cause last night, they said the amount of mon­ey re­leased could on­ly cov­er net salaries. There­fore, the work­ers’ de­duc­tions were not paid, and all the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions are call­ing,” she said.

The union leader said she had con­sult­ed NATUC Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette and JTUM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick, stress­ing she was re­strain­ing work­ers from fur­ther ac­tion but warned pa­tience was run­ning out.

When Ameen sug­gest­ed di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion, De Bique-Meade coun­tered that the union had sent let­ters to Kent House on Au­gust 4 and Sep­tem­ber 4 re­quest­ing a meet­ing, but re­ceived no re­ply.

“We see that as gross dis­re­spect to the union.”

Speak­ing with the me­dia af­ter­wards, she added, “This is the third fort­night of late pay­ment. On Mon­day, I com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the CEO. She said, ‘PG, I have a dri­ver and a ve­hi­cle on stand­by, but the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary told me she can­not give any as­sur­ance that any cheque would be re­leased.’ The work­ers got fed up and said, ‘PG, we are ready to take this to an­oth­er lev­el.’”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get fur­ther com­ment from Ameen but was un­suc­cess­ful.

Par­ris, how­ev­er, said he was shocked by Ameen’s re­marks, in­sist­ing Craw­ford had al­ready in­di­cat­ed salaries would be de­layed and staff had been on stand­by to col­lect a cheque.

“For the last three fort­nights, we have had an is­sue, and I think it has been re­port­ed as well. We had a cash flow prob­lem in terms of when work­ers get paid, both dai­ly and month­ly. As a mat­ter of fact, we had to vire some mon­ey when fore­cast­ing salaries this month,” Par­ris said.

He added that staff in his of­fice would soon strug­gle, warn­ing that even month­ly-paid salaries—in­clud­ing coun­cil­lors—were now at risk.

In­ci­den­tals for coun­cil­lors’ of­fices re­main un­paid for two months, while dis­trict sec­re­taries have al­so faced de­lays, he said.