Monique Dawkins, Shop Stewart at the Registrar General’s Office
Staff at the Registrar General’s Office staged a protest along with officials of the Bahamas Public Services Union (BPSU) on Thursday at its Shirley Street location. Among their grievances the group spoke out against their working conditions and the building’s elevator being out of service.
Shop Stewart, Monique Dawkins gave details of the concerns. She said, “we have persons always being off because they are sick because of the mold. Our work entails dealing with files. This office is not the typical government office. We have to climb stairs with the files in order to do our work. Imagine, you sitting in your law firm, these ladies have shopping bags of files and boxes totting up stairs to accommodate you in your law firm. We still waiting on promotions.”
Dawkins added, “we’ve had enough and nobody, successive governments, FNM and PLP, have treated this office like garbage. We are very important to the financial services industry to locals. We are very important. It’s time for them to give this office its due.”
BPSU President Kimsley Ferguson was also on hand. He told reporters, “we don’t want to have to pull everybody out of the building. And so our motto says reason together accomplishes. And so we want to be able to reason and get a definitive response on one, when the elevator will be fixed two, when they’re going to have telephones in this building cause for years now the staff here had to have been using their personal cell phones to communicate with the various clients that come in.”
Ferguson continued saying, “it is important to address these situations other than that we are promising the government services are going to be suspended.”
According to Attorney General, Sen. Hon. Ryan Pinder, a meeting was held between the Permanent Secretary and Ferguson on Thursday. He also said via statement, “we have a cooperative understanding with the union and are happy we had an opportunity to clarify the concerns raised. The elevator is scheduled for repair by the landlord and in the interim we are providing additional support to them to assist with the files.”
