Coral Strand and SAVOY hotel try to rip off Seychellois workers

By noon Saturday 10th August, the deadline which the government had given to the owners of the Coral Strand Hotel and the SAVOY Resort and Spa, to pay the Seychellois workers their full salary, passed but nothing had changed. The hotels are jointly managed by the Eastern European Investment Company Limited, a Russian based entity. On Tuesday Last week the management informed the workers that they would only get part of their end of July salary. Coral Strand staff would get 41% of their basic salary, while those working for SAVOY would get 89%.

As soon as THE INDEPENDENT got this information, along with colleagues from another newspaper we started the ball rolling to help those workers get their right, by mobilizing all the local media to report on this matter. The workers were rightly furious, as their salaries were provided for under the Financial Assistance forJobs Retention programme, which the government put in place as part of the post COVID19 economic recovery strategy. The President and the Vice-President were alerted of the developing situation at both hotels. The Minister of Employment was asked to take up the matter with the management of the hotels.When the two tourism establishments first applied for the assistance, which would guarantee the salaries of its workers, the selection committee in the Ministry of Finance found that they had enough money in their accounts to pay the salaries and they were turned down. Very soon after, two court cases and a demand for a freezing of assets of the management company meant they could not pay the salaries. Government agreed to pay for the local staff. One of their bank accounts was subsequently released to allow the salary for their expatriate workers to be paid. The assistance package from FA4JR includes income tax and pension fund payment for the workers.Towards mid-July the Seychellois workers got their end of June salaries and their respective taxes and salary based repayments such as housing loans were deducted from their salaries. However the management never paid those deductions to neither the Seychelles Revenue Commission, nor the Pension Fund, or the other entities such as the Housing Finance Company. Some expatriate workers said they only got half of their June salary towards the beginning of July, while other claim they have not been paid at all.

The department of Employment has said it has started legal action against the companies for not paying the expatriates. On Thursday last week the Seychellois staff protested against the part salary payment. As the two hotels hadn’t paid their dues, the Department of Finance explained that they deducted the taxes owed from the assistance amount for the end of July salaries as there is enough money in the account to pay for the balance; but the management claimed that because of the deduction they would not be able to pay the full salaries. This led to the protest which was covered by all the local media and resulted in a meeting between the staff representatives, the hotels’ management, the Chairman of the Seychelles Federation of General Workers Union Antoine Robinson and the Principal Secretary for Employment who delivered his ministry’s ultimatum that the salaries needed to be paid in full within 48 hours or severe action will be taken.Instead of immediately complying with the ultimatum, the management ordered the accounts staff to proceed with payment as originally planned, but they refused. Friday evening sources within the ministry of Employment and Immigration said the head office in Russia had claimed they are trying to raise a loan to make the salary payment. By Saturday morning, a press release from the Ministry informed that the company in Russia has given its assurance that all salaries would be paid in full by midday Monday 12th August.