MoBay Metro drivers withdraw services amid salary dispute

WESTERN BUREAU:

Bus drivers employed to the state-owned Montego Bay Metro Company (MBMC) withdrew their services in the Second City on Monday, to register concerns over deductions made from their salaries in light of a claim that they were overpaid in March.

The protest disrupted commute for hundreds of people in St James, Trelawny and Hanover, where the public bus service operates.

Alexander Nicholson, acting island supervisor for the National Workers Union (NWU) which represents the workers, confirmed that the workers do not believe the deductions were justified.

“Honestly, I don’t know why this was done and I stand firm with the drivers to stay off the job until the [transport] ministry and the Montego Bay Metro Company furnish us with documented information justifying these deductions,” Nicholson told The Gleaner yesterday. “I spoke with an official at the Ministry of Transport and he said that he was going into a meeting and would get back to me, but I have not heard anything from them as yet.”

Nicholson said he was not given a satisfactory response when he visited the MBMC bus depot to ascertain why the deductions were made after the union was given an assurance that this would not be done until the reclassification concerns with the Ministry of Finance were ironed out.

On Tuesday when the workers had begun showing signs of being restive, Colin Murray, chairman of the MBMC, told The Gleaner that the Ministry of Finance had blundered in its calculations and, as a result, the bus company had overpaid its staff.

“The reality is that there was an error by the ministry in terms of the reclassification. I already gave instructions that we will not make any deduction until the ministry sorts it out. It’s nothing from Montego Bay Metro side. It’s an error from the ministry’s side, in terms of reclassification,” Murray told The Gleaner.

However, yesterday, Nicholson said that the union is yet to get any official information from any of the entities involved to justify the decision to make the deductions.

“Nothing from the Ministry of Finance, nothing from the Ministry of Transport, and nothing from Montego Bay Metro, so I don’t know why the GM (general manager) went ahead and gave the instructions to do the deductions,” said Nicholson. “We need to hear something because, if it is that the Ministry of Finance has blundered, we expect that the Ministry of Finance would come forth now and say, ‘Yes, it was us. Here is the document’. But, from what is happening, it is appearing that something is wrong,” he said.

hopeton.bucknor@gleanerjm.com