The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

THE union representing customs and immigration officers has taken court action against the government for alleged breach of contract and violating the Constitution.

Last Thursday, officers of the Immigration Department staged a sick-out, citing general poor treatment from executives and the lack of proper promotions in the ranks.

Yesterday, the Bahamas Customs, Immigration and Allied Workers Union held a press conference where its president, Sloan Smith, revealed that two court actions have been filed.

“Over the past four years we have been trying to engage the government to sign contracts to the extent that we have given them two separate proposals even when things had changed going into COVID and all of that,” Mr Smith said.

“Today this follows up on the fact that obviously we are unable to sit with the government for whatever reason. So we filed a court action for breach of contract.

“The breach of contract had to do with a term in our industrial agreement which we had arrived at which calls for, effective January 1, 2018, uniformed allowance would go from $200 to $250. It is now 2021 some 43 months later and there are about 131 customs officers not receiving the $250 uniform allowance.

“That translates per person to about $2,250 or thereabouts. When you multiply that by 131 then you have an idea of the overall costs of doing that. That is not a difficult thing to solve.

“In talking to the Controller (of customs), she sent it on to the public service seeking to get them to go ahead and get it paid. For some reason they never responded to her.”

Mr Smith said the union felt too much time has passed with its members being ignored so on September 6, the action was filed.

“We feel that is easily resolvable but for some reason although it was forwarded to the permanent secretary and the financial secretary, both of whom are aware of that email asking them to resolve it in 14 days otherwise we will take necessary procedures to get it done. No one said anything. So it is three months later and we thought we should file the court action.”

Besides the cost of uniforms, the union also takes issue with the lack of staff promotions and the way in which executives were hired.

“The second filing we did on September 10 had to do with the procedures for hiring immigration officers,” said Mr Smith. “The government hired the gentleman, Clarence Russell to be the Director of Immigration and they hired Stuart Curtis to be the Assistant Director of Immigration. They also hired David C Rolle to be senior immigration officer.

“The union’s position is that the fact that you hired people in those offices, you totally bypassed the hiring practices as is outlined in the Constitution and 191 of the Immigration Act Section 7. They bypassed that process so nobody was able to apply for those posts or be promoted to those posts.

“So the three persons put in place are persons retired from the police force, that is Russell and Stuart; and the last gentlemen, Rolle, retired from the prison.”

The union feels deserving officers are being overlooked for promotions.

“What do we have now, no immigration (officer) can tell you they have been promoted. And, those who they said were recently promoted were really not promoted. They were simply confirmed in their positions,” he said.

“There is 13 months in probation and then you are confirmed in the post. So there are people who joined in 2010, 2014, 2016 and 2017 ... each of those persons should have been confirmed 13 months after their hiring. This is now 2021.”