By Aabigayle McIntosh

The government is seeking to ensure that overtime clocked by public sector workers are paid in a more timely manner.

There has been a major lapse in the timeframe for some of these payments with some public sector workers now refusing to work overtime over fears of not being paid.

The matter was discussed at length during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting and a decision was made to change the way payments are made.

Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Lionel Hurst explains, “Overtime is classified under an item labeled vendors so we have asked, the Cabinet have asked the Treasury to repurpose that and to place the item under payroll expense, because very often we find the payroll expense can indeed address the overtime in a quicker time frame.”

Adjustments are to be made by the treasury, however it will not be immediate.

“As you know, this decision was made on Wednesday pass and Sometimes we are very slow at making changes to such things as heads and so on. So I wish I could tell you how quickly that would be, but our hope is that it would become effective after budget day,” he said.

He added, “So maybe sometime in there we hope that we can get the treasury to rearrange the heads in such a way that those who are owed overtime can be paid more quickly than they have been in the past.