Public servants and welfare recipients wait on edge for late payments
by B. Roach
Following another month end scare of non-receipt of salary payments public servants eventually received their payments, while unconfirmed reports claim that between 90 to 100 of them may eventually lose their permanent jobs with the government not long from now.
While most persons with very few exceptions in the Ministry of Health, most public servants eventually received their pay, while some heads of departments advanced payment to some of their staff from their pocket.
Late in the day on February 1, 2011, The Montserrat Reporter editor assisted a little old lady who said she was just told she could go and collect her pay at Government Headquarters. That little lady expressed gratitude, but also annoyance that she had to wait for the opportunity to be able to pay her bills.
Up to Tuesday morning there was still some uncertainty before the government began the payment of social welfare benefits. Following the delay the Minister with responsibility for Community Services the Hon. Collin Riley explained in a ZJB report, “I don’t know if its lack of funds or the timing of the flow of funds….”
He said, “I think that the better definition for what is happing right is the timing of flow of funds.” He said the funding is available but there is a timing issue and it’s being worked on.
The Hon. Financial Secretary (FS), John Skerritt admitted: “revenues are flat, expenditures are increasing, so we do have a fiscal problem.”
He explained that “…the case for this month, it was simply that the departments did not have sufficient money in their vote…” adding, “…because we are issuing the general warrants by the quarter, we’re not giving the full year’s allocations so they did not have sufficiency in their vote – we have since addressed that… the recurrent budget is done quarterly and the budgetary aid comes in quarterly.”
He explained further, that government, because we had the storm damage expenditure. “We have had to try and fix those, so we used quite a bit of revenue,” he said, while adding that there was delay, “…as we needed to justify what we have spent …”
Meanwhile the Community Services Minister Riley believes, “…overtime, we’ll catch up because there is a big project about to break, those will generate tax revenue, and we will see a better 2011, I know.”
