As the Ministry of Labour continues to intervene in workers’ grievances with their employers to bring about amicable solutions, some $31.7 million in restitution has been recovered from defiant companies, chief among those being security firms.
This was revealed by Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton during his ministry’s end-of-year press conference on Tuesday.
In fact, he noted that a lot of the concerns are related to failure by employers to pay workers’ National Insurance Scheme (NIS) deductions.
According to Minister Hamilton, through the intervention of his ministry, over $200 million in restitution were recovered from defiant companies from 2020 to date.
Moreover, the minister said most of the complaints received by the ministry are against security companies.
Meanwhile, in 2023, the ministry had recovered $69 million in restitution. Hamilton attributed this decline to positive outcomes from the ministry’s continuous sensitisation activities and awareness campaigns.
In 2023, the ministry had received over 900 complaints from employees regarding various issues such as termination benefits, annual leave, unlawful deductions from salaries, overtime payments, failure to pay minimum wage and severance payments.
