There is growing disquiet among the staff at the beleaguered Montego Bay Metro Bus Company who has cited several issues now plaguing the 29 year-old entity which could lead to their taking action to force the hand of management to deal with the matters urgently.
The vexing issues stem from what the staff alleged as spurious political appointments which have failed to follow regular procedure, the suspension of two lucrative routes in Westmoreland, the unwarranted and unfair dismissal of a bus driver among others.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one worker sought to explain that: “We are there and we just saw a man, Christopher McCurdy, turn up overseeing disciplinary hearings and then was introduced by management as human resource personnel. What we are surprised about is that the post was not advertised internally or externally as is the custom and this man is in a senior position making decisions and we were not informed as to his job description and jurisdiction, but the company already has a HR manager.”
Another staff member mentioned that: “He is supervising the daily operations of the company and we are uncertain as to what is his role here. We do not know anything about him because he was not formally introduced to the staff he was just foisted upon us”.
What is also stirring discontent is the recent appointment of a young man as chief dispatcher, a vacancy which the staff says they did not know existed and no advertisement was made for the post.
Another matter which has earned the ire of the staff is what they described as the unfair dismissal of a bus driver, who has been accused of not issuing a ticket to a passenger, despite witnesses claiming that the passenger was paid for by someone else who had the ticket.
They also argued that the Negril and McField routes in Westmoreland have been suspended by management citing that they were not making money.
“That is a false claim because on any given Saturday the buses generally pull in $20,000 or more, and they generally make money other days of the week so I do not know why these routes have been taken out. It just does not make any sense to us.”
Meanwhile, they are awaiting a meeting with the management of the company to finalise the outstanding payments for uniform allowance as stipulated by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal which handed down it‘s judgement on the matter two weeks ago with a caveat that a meeting be held by the management with the unions to decide on the payment.
When contacted General Manager Nashu Lelievre and Human Resource Manager Christopher McCurdy both said:” We have no comment regarding those allegations“.
