By Regina Thomas on Thursday, 5 May, 2022 at 03:34 PM

Employees involved in the saga with Caribbean carrier LIAT over lack of severance have now taken matters into their own hands by mounting an online petition.

The petition launched on change.org carries the title "Help Former Liat employees receive their severance”. The petition is asking for 1500 signatures and up until press time The Wallpaper observed 1,380 persons had already signed the petition.

One former LIAT employee spoke to The Wallpaper under anonymity about how the petition may help them to gain the attention of regional heads.

“I support this petition one hundred percent with my entire family having been impacted the way that we have.  People need to know as widely as possible what is going one and why we have not been paid. Not only that the airline is closed and staff was left in this position but that it is owned by four governments up until this day. This is a disgrace and quite an embarrassment for a Government run airline to do this to staff,” he added.

The employee who did not want to disclose his position said if he had the chance to sit down with Prime Minister Mia  Mottley he would ask her to do right by the severed employees to get the matter settled.

“We think that Prime Minister Mottley should do the right thing. At the end of the day, Barbados still owns fifty-one percent of these airlines still. We know that the PM is big on morals and she is around the world speaking about doing right by people but at the end of the day where six hundred workers have been sent packing, we just want her to do the right thing. We think she is the best person to do so with her presence not only locally but internationally,” he said.

Minister of Tourism and International Transport Senator Lisa Cummins before this year's elections on January 19th promised that the former workers will receive their severance pay.

“We have a habit in the Barbados Labour Party and in the government of Barbados of sitting down and talking to people, talking through issues and we are hopeful that practice would be the same with LIAT 1974 Limited based in Antigua and the employees hired by the company of which Barbados is a shareholder still and bringing some final resolution to this matter. It simply cannot continue in this way indefinitely,” she said while speaking on Antiguan radio prior to the January 19th elections.