On Wednesday, February 15th, in an interview with Keith “Stone” Greaves on his weekly radio programme, Anguilla Rebranded, the honorable Minster of Education, Ms. Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers was asked what the status was concerning payment for those workmen who are still left unpaid for work that they carried out on a section of the new Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School project in The Quarter.
“I have been hearing the workers complaining about this situation for a while now. The workers a still hoping to be paid,” Keith said, “and they are pleading for the intervention of the Government of Anguilla to help them get their money, notwithstanding it was a sub-contractual arrangement which went awry. These workers are now putting the onus on Government to assist them in recouping their pay. What are your thoughts on this?”
The Minister responded with an extensive explanation:
“I continue to answer the same way whenever this issue comes before me,” she said. “When we held conversation with the sub-contractors, we made it very clear to them that the responsibility and liability of issues of non-payment lies directly with the one with whom they signed the contract.
“Therefore, since the sub-contractors would have signed a contractual agreement with the main contractor, that main contractor is responsible for paying them. That main contractor has a legal responsibility to provide payment for work completed and for work done. And because there are so many workers who are left unpaid, I suggested to them the proper course of action to take which would enable them to recover the monies owed to them.”
The Minister said that, however, there seems to be an unwillingness on the part of the workers to pursue that course of action – although she stopped short of directly disclosing the nature of the action she advised, which is left to speculation.
“It is a large number of workers,” she said, “who have been disenfranchised through non-payment by the main contractor. And, because he has not paid them, and because we have had to terminate his contract, what that has in effect done is to cost the country – our students and the people of Anguilla – another year on a split-shift system which had already demonstrated negative impacts on the learning, the well-being, and, most importantly, the safety of our students.”
She continued in emphatic tone: “When we have our students in a situation in which the work on their school was terminated, this means that the Government of Anguilla now has to find more money to complete the project. Therefore, the question becomes: ‘where will that money come from’?
She said that under ideal conditions, where there would have been the completion of the work on all four packages by September 2022, the students could have moved into the school by that time. Essentially, by that time the contractor and sub-contractors would have seen the national need to complete the project so that the new school could have opened and the students could continued their education in a safe, secure place. But sadly, that was not the case.
She further insisted that now, going forward, the Government has to enter into new contracts with contractors, and pay more money to get the work completed. “And what we have to understand is that each of us in Anguilla will have to shoulder that cost.”
When asked by Keith when the school is projected to open, the Minister answered that it will be completed and opened this year.
