The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

MORE than 150 Department of Environmental Health Services workers rallied in Rawson Square yesterday to demand Prime Minister Perry Christie meet with their representatives over job security concerns.

Led by Bahamas Public Services Union (BPSU) president John Pinder, the garbage depot workers said most of them have been without a job for up to a year and that despite being qualified for a permanent position, they remain “month to month” employees.

They attacked the government for ‘outsourcing’ garbage collection services to private companies rather than helping them make a living by giving them the equipment needed to do the job themselves.

Referring to Environment and Housing Minister, Kenred Dorsett, one man said: “Kenred Dorsett cannot help me. He cannot do the job. I want the Prime Minister to come out here and hear us.”

The protesters walked with their signs around Rawson Square in a circle for nearly an hour, many hoisting posters that read: ‘242 I need my money now,’ ‘Please save our jobs,’ ‘Accountability, enough is enough, too much is too much,’ and ‘Where is the overtime pay?’

Mr Pinder said the demonstration was an expression of the “distress persons are going through.”

He said the BPSU is demanding that the group of mainly men be ‘put to work’ and given a permanent job if they have good punctuality and performance records.

Mr Pinder said if the men could not be put to work with the garbage depot, then they should be given work to do as janitors or a similar job.

Otherwise, he said the government should move to have a number of dysfunctional garbage trucks repaired so they could be used in garbage collection efforts.

Mr Pinder said: “It’s a national concern. When you put people out of work, they start to find ways to feed their families and pay their bills, sometimes illegal ways.”

The protesters don’t enjoy benefits like a pension because they lack a permanent job, he said.

He added: “Successive governments have failed to give these people permanent jobs because of the cost and their lack of funds. When you, as a government, take on a full time salary, that’s 30 years of payment you are looking at.”

The protesters branded Mr Dorsett ‘incompetent’ and accused him of “talking a good game while not performing.”

They claimed Mr Dorsett promised to have broken garbage trucks repaired but had not made good on his promises.

Instead, they claimed, most of the government’s garbage trucks remain inoperable while the government pays private garbage collection companies to collect garbage.

One angry protester, Harry Adderly Jr, said: “The problem is everyone keeps us in the blind. When you do that, the staff gets restless because many of us have been here so many years and are still clueless about what’s going on. Not being permanent affects us because some of us have children that we have to feed.”

Another, Robert Newbold, said: “Our jobs are being put in jeopardy while they telling us to sit down and make our money. There’s been no work for about 200 workers for over a year.  We’ve had enough. We’re at the point where we don’t know if we have a job or not.”

Calvin Gooding said: “We have been saving the country for years and we don’t deserve this kind of treatment. We have children, we have mortgages to pay and we ain’ blaming VAT for our problems, we simply want a secure job.”

Another man said: “We might work on the garbage truck but we are not illiterate. “We love our job. We put our lives on the line for Bahamians every day. When you get diapers and all the mess the dogs make we gotta take care of that. We could do the job better than anyone yet the government paying private companies for the work we could do.”