THE Ministry of Local Government, Youth and Community Development has promised that overtime payments will be made by March 3 to disgruntled fire-fighters, who started a work-to-rule on Friday.The work-to-rule forced the Jamaica Fire Brigade to close half of the stations in the Corporate Area in a bid to reorganise its service to handle emergencies, and all emergency calls were re-routed to the functioning stations.
The work-to-rule, which meant that the fire-fighters refused to do overtime work, continued yesterday, spreading to rural fire stations, as firemen protested the delayed payment of overtime earnings.
However, the Ministry is disputing the amount of overtime payment which, according to reports, have been outstanding since last year.
"There are no outstanding emoluments of any kind, except for the February 2001 overtime payments," the Ministry stated in a press release yesterday.
The release stated that since December 1999, when overtime payments skyrocketed to close to $12 million or 25 per cent of the monthly wage bill of the Jamaica Fire Brigade, the Ministry had been attempting to deal with the inefficiencies within the system that continue to result in these excessive overtime payments. Consequently, the Ministry established the practice of separating normal salary from overtime payments, to verify all claims.
"Further, the unions were advised as early as February 16, 2001 that overtime payments would be made within a fortnight of normal salary payments which were scheduled for February 23rd. Consistent with this commitment, the payments will be made by March 3rd," the Ministry's release stated.
The 1,300 strong platoon of fire-fighters is about 500 short of its required complement, and fire-fighters have been demonstrating on and off since last year in protest against late payments of their overtime pay.
The Public Accounts Committee of Parliament was told in January that the overtime payments to the firemen was almost $120 million annually.
