As another year ebbs away into oblivion, I cannot help but wonder what is the Government of Saint Lucia’s motivation concerning the payment, or rather the non-payment, of my terminal benefits that should have been paid 31 years ago, in 1988, when I terminated my public teaching career in favour of private enterprise.
That is how long ago I stopped working for the Government of Saint Lucia. If I had worked in the private sector, whatever benefits I was entitled to would have been paid at the time of termination. So why should the government be any different, or so much worse by not only failing to pay on the due date of May 2014 but by being delinquent in paying five years and counting past the time to honour statutory requirements?
That condition smacks of conditional bondage, servitude, an unspoken disincentive to the effect that you cannot leave before pensionable age, otherwise you will have to wait till pensionable age to claim terminal benefits. A worker should have the right to collect terminal benefits immediately upon termination and move on. In any case, that is a whole new ball game that I will not venture into at this time.
I shall begin by articulating my articles of grievance against the Government of Saint Lucia. First, the government has blatantly breached the law requiring it to pay terminal benefits that were due since May 2014 without as much as explaining the reason for the delay. Second, the Ministry of Public Service, which the Ministry of Education referred me to as the executive agency on matters pertaining to terminal benefits, has consistently refrained from providing me with information that I have a right to, let alone payment itself. And third, more than five years after the due date of payment, the government has behaved in a cavalier manner by callously refraining from communicating to me when it will pay, in spite of writing two letters to the prime minister about the situation—in addition to the dozen I wrote the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Public Service.
Since October 2011, I began informing the Ministry of Public Service about the May 2014 date of payment. That ministry received a dozen letters from me between 2011 and 2018 dealing with this issue, but initially chose to argue process over substance. Those letters were simultaneously copied to the Ministry of Education which had been my direct employer. What resulted over those years was a contrasting tale of two ministries. On the one hand, Ms Esther Brathwaite, the permanent secretary for education, was always cooperative in responding to my letters in writing, and provided me with all the information she could. On the other hand, Mr Phillip Dalsou, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Public Service is yet to communicate a single word to me.
I shall highlight some of Ms Brathwaite’s letters to single her out as an exceptional executive public official. In a memo to me she went as far as reprimanding the Ministry of Public Service for its lax business practices and urged Mr Dalsou to do a reality check of the current issue. In spite of all my letters to both the Ministry of Public Service and the prime minister, communications from Ms Brathwaite to that ministry and my press coverage so far, the matter remains unresolved.
How a government can be so brazen in breaching the law by paying no attention to a deadline for payment after a waiting period of over thirty years is beyond comprehension! That’s not all. The intransigence, the contempt is taken further by not deeming it proper to personally communicate in writing, information pertinent to payment. There’s more! The disinformation and sheer lies from the Ministry of Public Service are basically disingenuous ploys to buy out more time so as to perpetuate the agony of waiting and to obfuscate an already confusing situation created by that ministry.
For instance, on June 30, 2015, the Ministry of Education replied to me in part that the Ministry of Public Service informed them that they are “still putting mechanism in place to adhere to this policy. As such, your request has already been sent to that ministry for consideration and you will be contacted when this process has been completed.” That was over five years ago! Maybe they cannot find a mechanic to fix the mechanism. And what policy, when the written law has stipulated what is to be done since years ago!
In another instance, earlier this year the Ministry of Public Service notified my daughter that my case had been sent to Cabinet. Up to now there is no word. This time I wonder whether all the ministers are still locked up in the Cabinet. In any case, I am at a loss to understand what my case is doing before Cabinet. I always thought money owed for the past thirty-one years was safe in an investment bank or trust, not in a cabinet.
So far, the story that has unravelled for the past eight years is convincingly clear: that the Government of Saint Lucia has not shown any unambiguous determination to pay me my terminal benefits mandated by law to be paid since May 2014 after repeated communications to the agencies involved, especially the Ministry of Public Service. The years past the missed deadline will also be factored in for specific and general damages incurred. I hope the government would opt for a solution other than the civil litigation route.
-By Peter C. Maximin
