A months-long pay dispute affecting frontline public workers in Antigua and Barbuda is moving toward resolution, after Prime Minister Gaston Browne publicly ordered government agencies to cut through bureaucratic red tape and speed up outstanding salary and overtime payments to Public Works employees.
Speaking during his weekly public radio program, the *Browne and Browne Show*, on Saturday, Browne confirmed that a number of recently hired workers, who joined the Public Works department within the last two to three months, had not yet received their first salaries. Additionally, long-standing staff across the department have waited weeks or longer for earned overtime compensation that has yet to be processed.
The Prime Minister traced the root of the delay to cumbersome internal government bureaucracy, rather than a lack of available funds. In response to growing worker frustration, he has issued formal directives to three key bodies — the Permanent Secretary of the Public Works department, Public Works internal leadership, and the national Treasury Department — to prioritize processing all outstanding payments and cut unnecessary procedural hold-ups.
“All we did was ask the PS and the staff to expedite, as well as the Treasury Department, so they can be paid,” Browne explained to listeners during the broadcast.
Midway through the program, the Prime Minister updated the public on initial progress: he had just received new information confirming that all overtime payments through the month of January had already been fully processed. With that backlog cleared, he instructed officials to turn their full attention to processing the remaining payment vouchers to bring all outstanding overtime payments fully up to date.
The government’s action comes directly after a public demonstration by Public Works employees, who gathered recently to highlight their concerns over delayed wages and overtime that had created financial hardship for affected workers. Browne noted that he had already held one-on-one meetings with the protesting workers to hear their grievances directly before issuing the formal directive to resolve the issue.
As of Saturday’s announcement, the Prime Minister has not shared a specific firm deadline by which all outstanding payments will be fully disbursed, nor has he disclosed the exact number of workers impacted by the pay delays.