Ramsey N Singbeh Jr
director@news.throngtalk.com
+231772641146 / 880147358
Kakata: The Administration of the Booker Washington Institute or BWI in Kakaka, Margibi County has been accused of running a dubious payroll system and wrongly reducing the salaries of some workers of the institution.
The allegations were made by workers of BWI about a few days ago. They spoke on anonymity expressing fears that mentioning their names could lead to witch hunt and other issues for them by the administration.
Hence, not all the workers of BWI including the employees and contractors are making these allegations and none of them showed a payslip to authenticate the claims.
Some of them claimed to have been unable to meet certain financial obligations due to the said actions against them but the BWI’s Administration has however distanced itself from the accusations.
One of the institution’s technical department workers hinted that some of the workers who were to receive nearly two hundred United States Dollars (US$200) got affected by a pay cut that saw them taking home less than hundred United States Dollars (US$100).
The workers say the situation is too embarrassing for them, urging that the Principal, Nancy T Freeman, takes actions for corrective measures if she is not in the know of the purported illegal activities going on at the school.
They are further lamenting that Madam Freeman met the dubious payroll system but has refused to do anything about it.
BWI Vice Principal For Administration (VPA), Thomas V Fahuwu Speaks To Reporters.
Speaking to reporters on the main campus of BWI, the Vice Principal for Administration, Thomas V Fahuwu said: “Firstly, let me say that is false, by saying BWI having a dubious payroll that is not to my knowledge.”
He too, like the workers making the accusations, never showed the payroll system of the school to authenticate his denial of dubiousness in the BWI’s payroll system.
The VPA who said that the institution has both government’s funding and Internal allotment also explained that some of the people, for about two years now have not entered “government’s direct deposit”, including employees and contractors but the two systems move parallel with people correctly getting their benefits from the “government’s direct deposit” and the instruction’s “internal funding”.
According to him, once a person is hired by the institution, he or she is placed on a probation for three (3) months, following which an appraisal is done in line with said person’s supervisor to determine if a termination of the contract should be done or the human resource department should consider the person a permanent worker.
Upon doing this, he noted, the individual gets the rightful pay or benefit he or she offers service(s) for monthly.
He stated that at BWI, they do not have a secret so they usually have cabinet meetings and general meetings that allow all the students and workers to raise any issue affecting them but none of the allegations has been to the knowledge of the administration.
All the workers, he mentioned, have access to their immediate supervisors and the principal of the school as a way of allowing them raise any alarm.
“It’s by surprise to me to tell me about dubious payroll because if you are employee and we see the year end program where in the business manager gets on the podium and explain the financial aspect, tells us even the status of the budget, budget performance issues and then, we discuss all these things, people ask questions and the questions are attended to, so any other thing that might have been on their minds, I have not been aware,” Mr Fahuwu added.
He termed the accusation relating to reduction in the workers’ pay as a false claim. He said probably, some of the workers may be misunderstanding the withholding of taxes by the bank from their salaries which is by law and beyond BWI’s control.
The VPA went on to tell reporters that they inherited a mistaken situation from the bank (LBDI) that has to do with ‘available and current balances’. He mentioned himself as a case study in which he said he did a withdrawal of ten thousand Liberian Dollars (L$10,000) out of fifteen thousand Liberian Dollars (L$15,000) credited to his account by the bank, but the same bank send him an alert that he is left with sixteen thousand Liberian Dollars (L$16,000) instead of five thousand Liberian Dollars (L$5,000).
He disclosed that he saw a communication written to the Booker Washington Institute Workers Union or BOWIWU, also carbon copied to his office from the bank explaining everything in detail relating to the situation and how modalities are being instituted to implement corrective measures. The communication, he claims was written after an inquiry by BOWIWU.
How be it, the workers’ union declined to given an audience to reporters. Mr. Thomas V Fahuwu urged workers to be able to engage with each other and the administration if they have issues related to BWI.
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