President of the Bahamas Public Services Union John Pinder has called for the persons responsible for the close to $1 million pay blunder involving employees of the Department of Environmental Health in September to be reprimanded.
He said the female who was responsible for overpaying those workers should not be punished alone for her mistake and added that her immediate supervisors should be reprimanded for not properly overseeing the work of the junior clerk responsible for the error.
According to Mr. Pinder, the woman who was in the accounts department at Environmental Health has since been transferred to the departmentﾒs administrative office and has been given fewer duties.
He said a clerk who is even more inexperienced is set to assume the duties connected to the payroll.
“The unionﾒs concern is the way in which the person who made the error was handled. She was a junior officer and two supervisors should have overseen her workﾅI think it’s a situation where there was a breakdown in communication because certainly that female was not in a position to do the payouts,” Mr. Pinder said.
Minister of Energy and Environment Dr. Marcus Bethel has said that an investigation was launched into the matter and based on the results the woman could face action.
Last month, the woman accidentally overpaid workers at Environmental Health by adding an additional zero onto the salaries of employees, according to sources in the department.
“The female has way less responsibilities now, and it appears as if she is being demoralized and victimized for the error made,” Mr. Pinder said.
“I am waiting and watching the situation to see if the others will be dealt with.”
The union president said if the supervisors are not reprimanded, he would challenge the decision because it would not be fair to the transferred female.
“This is unprecedented where we allow these junior officers to deal with payroll,” he said.
“I feel as though a more mature person should be placed in the accounts departmentﾅWe would like the department to be proactive when selecting persons to fill this position so that these type of errors donﾒt reoccur,” the BPSU president said.
Mr. Pinder also told the Bahama Journal that the employeesﾒ accounts were frozen. He said this was unacceptable because employees need their money to pay their bills.
“While we donﾒt condone the [overpayment], we donﾒt feel that the department should have withheld the salaries,” Mr. Pinder said.
“We subsequently got that matter resolved. I personally spoke to the treasurer on that, and it was a bank decision to freeze the account, so that funds could be recovered and we have agreed that another process will be done to ensure that personsﾒ salaries are not withheld, but some other form of payment arrangement will be [made] to retrieve outstanding funds.”
According to Mr. Pinder, approximately $100,000 is still outstanding.
He said some people are working overtime to pay the funds back.
By: Bianca Symonette, The Bahama Journal
