Staff: Pay delays causing inconvenience, hardship

LAE urban local level government (LULLG) employees have yet to receive their full pay are facing problems and hardship.
Five long-serving staff members have died while waiting, they said.
Lae city manager Joel Kolam said an indemnity letter that was given by the Lae City Authority (LCA) had been signed that outstanding payments would be made.
“I signed the letter purposely for LCA to pay LULLG employees and it does not mean that LCA could also take other underlying agendas under the pretext of what it is meant for,” Kolam said.
Kolam said the other conditions that were contained in the indemnity letter were policy matters that he could not address at his level.
“These have to be approved after proper vetting processes through the administration and the councillors have to deliberate on it before that can be approved.”
Some employees of LULLG had expressed concern that in their wait for their pay since July 1, five long-serving staff members had died, financial burdens had built up while school children were affected.
LCA chief executive officer Neill Ellery confirmed that the indemnity form was signed and because the employees were not LCA staff, their pay was made manually through BSP.
“A total of 320 staff were paid manually and we did that twice and then BSP advised that they would no longer entertain manual pay because it was time-consuming,” he said.
Ellery claimed that LCA had informed Kolam three weeks ago that they should provide LCA with an electronic copy of their payroll database.
“This is so that we can trace the electronic Kundu pay so the bank (BSP) could process pay for all staff electronically,” he said.