PM Roosevelt Skerrit has expressed deep dismay about the inability of the regional owners of LIAT airline to pay severance benefits to retrenched employees of the airline. For over one year, furloughed LIAT workers are yet to receive their payments and Skerrit said this is not an ideal situation and that regional owners of the airline must do something urgently.
Skerrit noted that the former LIAT employees are human beings who have families to feed and mortgage to pay. He said many families must be hungry at this time with little or no hope elsewhere since the regional owners of LIAT have not resolved their severance pay issue. He said he might have to raise this issue at the CARICOM or OECS forum so that LIAT owners can agree on what to do and do it urgently.
“I believe it’s important as a grouping, that we look seriously at addressing the issue of severance,” he said. “It is a lot of money and a lot of money in a time when all governments have no money or little money, but I still believe that these are human beings. They have families; they have mortgages like all of us…”
Skerrit said the DLP government has been paying the salaries of LIAT workers resident in Dominica until such a time when the airline will be stronger and more profitable. He noted that LIAT workers in other countries would not feel the pains of loss such much if their governments would also undertake to pay them until the airline is fully back on its feet.
According to Skerrit, Dominica has a redundancy fund operated by the Dominica Social Security (DSS) which troubled companies may access to pay their workers. He said Dominica has been paying LIAT workers in the country out of this fund and will continue to help “even above and beyond what we have to” do to assist affected airline workers.
Court-appointed LIAT administrator, Cleveland Seaforth, said the airline owes about EC$119,006,962 to workers as at April 2020 and EC$79,011,337 of the total amount is for legal settlement. The administrator said the total amount needed to settle employees cannot even be realized from liquidating the airline. He said the government of Antigua is willing to pay 50% of workers severance benefits through a combination of cash, land, or government bonds and that other regional co-owners should consider the same to clear the accumulated debts.
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