00:00Clean-up crews were hard at work at Barataria South Secondary School
00:05as Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Amin
00:09and Barataria San Juan MP Saddam Hussein toured the site to assess the ongoing maintenance program.
00:16Addressing concerns over delayed wages, Amin said the problem was administrative,
00:22not the fault of workers or supervisors,
00:24and that a new payroll management system has been introduced to reduce human error.
00:30We have identified what the issue is and it's administrative.
00:33It is not the fault of the workers or the supervisors.
00:36What I have done is engaged a company to provide services to do the payroll management
00:43so that it doesn't rely on where it's subjective to human error.
00:48The minister says the majority of outstanding payments have since been made
00:53with only a small number of workers still awaiting one or two outstanding fortnights.
00:59Some of these workers had about five fortnights outstanding.
01:02We have cleared that backlog, so some of them might have one or two fortnights,
01:07but I still continue to pay individual attention.
01:10Amin also says the program provides better wages than similar initiatives in the past,
01:16with laborers earning a minimum of $209 a day,
01:20along with allowances for workers who use their own equipment.
01:24The good thing about this program is you're not getting $90 or $100 like how CPEP was.
01:31The lowest pay is $209 for the laborer.
01:34Those who have workers, you get a worker allowance,
01:37and I also left it open if other people have workers
01:41and they want to come on the program with a worker,
01:44we'll make the arrangement to allow you.
01:46Charlotte Kisto, TV6 News.
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