Business | Buckie Got It

Business, International news, News, Travel

LIAT Workers Getting Paid But No Promise Salaries Won’t Be Late Again

Published April 5, 2017

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Wednesday April 5, 2017 – Industrial action by employees of regional airlines LIAT seems to have been averted – for now.

Chairman of the shareholder governments, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, yesterday evening announced that the latest sore point – the issue of late pay – has been resolved, if only for the time being.

The shareholder governments summoned an urgent meeting yesterday after tensions flared over the weekend after salaries were late. But Gonsalves emerged from the meeting with staff, management, the unions and shareholders at the Hilton Barbados Resort to announce that given the tone of the of the meeting, he would “be very surprised if any form of industrial action was pursued by various unions representing the staff.

“I think that instructions have gone to the bank for the payments, so depends on which bank you are in, some persons would get paid tomorrow [Wednesday] or the next day,” he told the media.

However, trouble could still be lurking, with the Vincentian leader suggesting that there was no guarantee that the airline would not be late with salaries again soon.

“The management is not saying that they would be in a position on each occasion over the next three months to pay precisely on time; there may be a couple of days deferral,” Gonsalves said.

Gonsalves said the issue of salaries was an important one, but there were “several practical questions” that needed to be addressed, “which are of concern to the staff and the travelling public by extension, that we hope immediately to be addressed over the medium term”.

The prime minister also revealed that plans had been drafted for the establishment of a technical committee to formulate a medium term development plan for the struggling airline.

‘What we decided on the way forward is that I would liaise with the president of the Caribbean Development Bank [CDB], who would name someone to draw up terms of reference for a technical committee to study a series of issue affecting operations of LIAT. This would be fed into a task force appointed by the shareholders and that task force would hold consultations with all of the relevant stakeholders . . . . Hopefully we can put together these committees in the week after Easter Monday and there is an outside time of three months for all of this technical and consultative work to be done and the report to be presented to the shareholders,” the Vincentian leader said.

In the meantime, Gonsalves assured that the LIAT management would not be resting on their laurels while the consultative work was being completed, as they have a number of issues pertaining to flight operations and the company’s day-to-day operations to address.

In a press release issued on Sunday LIALPA, possible the most militant of the unions, had called on the shareholder governments to dismiss the airline’s management.

Gonsalves did not address this matter in any detail, limiting his comments to an acknowledgement that those concerns were raised “in robust language”.

“The employees raised a number of issues relating to decisions, which, if the employees are correct about those matters, they would require immediate corrective action,” he said.

News, Regional News, Travel

LIAT in fresh dispute with workers

Published: 4 April 2017

A meeting will be held here Tuesday to discuss how to get out of the latest problem facing the struggling regional carrier, LIAT, which is embroiled in a salary dispute with staff.

The airline’s Acting Chief Executive Officer Julie Reifer-Jones said the shareholder governments had agreed to intervene in the carrier’s latest disagreement with workers and will meet Tuesday to determine how to avert industrial action.

The unions representing the workers have rejected the company’s plan to pay salaries late because of its financial woes. The unions have also threatened to take action if the airline proceeded with the deferrals.

In a press release issued on Sunday, the pilots’ union, the Leeward Islands Airline Pilots Association (LIALPA) went a step further, saying it “will not stand by and watch the airline’s financial health continue to deteriorate at massive levels, to the point where LIAT can’t even pay salaries on time”.

It also called on the shareholder governments to sack the management.

“LIAT management refuses to accept responsibility for the sad state of the airline’s affairs, and instead is focusing on making the crew the scapegoats. The travelling public deserves to know the truth: The current management at LIAT is not capable of running the airline at this critical time. Their track record speaks for itself,” LIALPA said in the release.

The union also strongly denied claims that delays in service experience over the weekend were due to industrial action by the pilots.

“This has nothing to do with LIALPA and we are not involved at all. As a matter of fact, we continue to pledge to the Caribbean people that we are currently going above and beyond the call of duty to get the airline running at optimal levels, even to the extent of not having meal breaks and working 11 hour shifts. We have already worked almost an extra week without pay. However, this is not sustainable,” the release stated.

Education, News, Regional News

Sex talks Comprehensive sexuality education comes under scrutiny

Published: 4 April 2017

The Ministry of Education is being asked to set clear guidelines for the teaching of sex education in the island’s schools.

During a fiery hour-long television debate Sunday night on the contentious issue of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), Chairman of the children’s charity ProtEqt Children’s Foundation Dr Veronica Evelyn stopped just short of describing the teaching of the subject as a free-for-all.

Evelyn, whose charity and advocacy group works in schools across the island, charged that there was no policy on what should be taught, or no consistent content, and the teachers lacked the proper training needed to deliver the health and family life education (HFLE) programme.

“The question is who is teaching . . . because in the schools you have health and family life educators who have been trained, but what goes on on the ground is . . . many times in order to just fill space in a timetable, if a teacher doesn’t have enough periods for the week, they are put to teacher HFLE,” the sociologist said on the CBC television show, The People’s Business.

“In our schools – and I am saying this without any fear of contradiction, I have worked with the schools – you have persons who have not been trained who are delivering this content . . . and not only so [but] because of a lack of accountability, sometimes it is abused,” she added.

CSE is one of the United Nations’ key strategies for combating the spread of HIV and AIDS among children and young people, and is described by the UN agency UNESCO as “an age-appropriate, culturally relevant approach to teaching about sex and relationships by providing scientifically accurate, realistic, non-judgemental information”.

UNESCO says that by adopting a comprehensive strategy, CSE emphasizes “an approach to sexuality education that encompasses the full range of information, skills and values to enable young people to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and to make decisions about their health and sexuality”.

However, it has sparked controversy here, with Government legislator and church leader David Durant recently charging that CSE was “one of the greatest assaults on the health and innocence of children” and has an almost excessive focus on teaching children how to obtain sexual pleasure or gratification in various ways, including masturbation, anal and oral sex.

“I am appealing to the Ministry of Education and the PTA not to allow comprehensive sexuality education to enter our school system. It should not be embraced here because comprehensive sexuality education is one of the greatest assaults on the health and innocence of children. This is because unlike traditional sexual education, comprehensive sexuality education uses explicit material to promote promiscuity and high risk sexual behaviour to children as healthy and normal,” he said in his contribution to the debate on the 2017/2018 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.

“I do not think it is anything we should impose on our six, seven, eight, nine and ten-year-old children and even children a little older. The main goal of comprehensive sexuality education is to change the sexual norms of society. I am appealing that we do not allow it to have a firm root in our society,” he stressed.

This led to a stinging response from George Griffith, a social worker and former executive director of the Barbados Family Planning Association, who wrote in a column in Barbados TODAY that Durant’s opposition to the subject was “rooted in a set of deep-seated myths and downright misinformation based on denial and failure to accept that in this day and age, our children cannot be insulated from the realities of today’s 21st century world”.

“I make bold to say that persons who seek to deny our children access to CSE on the basis of their denial, fear, homophobic disposition or warped religions beliefs are doing them a great disservice,” Griffith wrote.

The former BFPA chief was among the five-member panel appearing on Sunday night’s television show. However, it was left to the association’s Youth Development Officer Keriann Hurley to repel many of the charges – both direct and inferred – including concerns by Ambrose Carter, the Pure Sex Centre founder, whose organization promotes abstinence before marriage.

Carter said research by his organization had revealed that 87 per cent of 11-plus students preferred to wait until marriage to have sex, and questioned whether CSE covered this “full circle of truth”.

“So, they want to wait for marriage, who is teaching them that? You asked about the real life practices? I am asking about the way of teaching. You hearing about all the sub-cultures and these things and the things that are bad that are happening. So who is bringing the positive? If the Barbados Family Planning Association is charged with the responsibility of teaching health and sexuality education to our children . . . is the Barbados Family Planning Association also encouraging children, or telling them that sex in marriage is also an option?” he asked.

However, Hurley told the panel, which also included President of the Youth Advocacy and Outreach Movement of the BFPA Kamal Clarke, that the children got the full truth about sex.

“We do give the full circle of truth and we do definitely make sure that all of the information allows every person whether you are religious or not to be able to make an informed decision and be able to stick to your personal value system,” she said.

Despite the strong differences, all the panellists agreed there was need for sex education in schools, but it ought to be delivered in an age-appropriate manner.

Business, Economics, Local news, News, Regional News, Travel

Customs Department to take over alleged money laundering incident

Published: 4 April 2017

The Custom and Excise Division will be taking over the investigation into an alleged case of money laundering involving a male and a female who were intercepted at the VC Bird International Airport last Friday evening.

Lev Josiah of Paynters and Erica Thomas of Mount Joy were arrested by police and taken into custody.

They were intercepted by Airport Security, with over US $20,000 and almost EC $3,000 in their possession. The monies were seized and the matter handed over to the Customs department and the police.

Police Public Relations Officer (PRO) Inspector Frankie Thomas told OBSERVER media yesterday that Erica Thomas was released pending further investigations, while Josiah remains in custody and will have to answer to the comptroller of Customs today.

Airport Security was conducting one of their routine security checks when they found Josiah with over US $18,000 and EC $785.

Thomas, on the other hand, was caught with the lesser amount, of over US $2,000 and EC $1750.

The two were booked to travel to St Maarten

Business, News, Regional News, Travel

Liat mum on call to axe management

Published: 4 April 2017

LIALPA President Captain Carl Burke (OBSERVER media photo)

The union representing Liat pilots is calling for the immediate removal of the airline’s top managers, amidst the implementation of a salary deferral system that was rejected by staff and the union, among other issues.

Yesterday, the airline’s communications department shied away from the media when asked to respond to the public call by the Leeward Islands Airlines Pilots Association’s (LIALPA’s) for its senior management team – led by acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Julie Reifer-Jones – to be sacked.

When OBSERVER media reached out to the airline for comment we were told that Liat would issue a response either today or later in the week.

In the meantime, in a press release dated April 2, 2017 LIALPA stated, “Unfortunately it has no other choice but to call on the shareholder governments to remove the current Liat management”.

Then, speaking on OBSERVER Radio on Monday, President of LIALPA Carl Burke said his union was also making a “cry to the public” for what the release termed “public pressure” to be put on the Board of Directors to fire the management.

LIALPA’s ire was, according to it, raised by the fact that the company did not pay salaries on time. The union stated, “When a company cannot pay salaries on time, then management must accept that they have failed and they should be removed.”

Burke said, “It’s not that I can say they can’t pay the staff, but they’ve moved so far down the priority list in terms of who should be paid when and at what time, that the staff is now at the bottom of the priority list.”

The union chief added, “Management refuses to accept responsibility for the sad state of the airline’s affairs, and instead is focusing on making the crew the scapegoats.”

LIALPA also used its release to disassociate itself from what Liat termed as “industrial unrest” that allegedly took place on Sunday. LIALPA’s release stated that the unrest “has nothing to do with LIALPA and we are not involved at all”.

He was referring to an earlier April 2, 2017 release in which Liat said the airline was “currently experiencing a number of delays and cancellations” due to the unrest.