GOVERNMENT is going ahead with plans to officially close National Energy Solutions (NESol) Limited today, but workers will have to wait until the end of November to receive their termination payments.

General secretary of the Union of Technical Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP) St Patrice Ennis, representing the 57 workers, had previously expressed concern that workers may have to leave their payments behind for now as these would not be settled in time for the October 30 closure deadline.

Ennis told the Jamaica Observer that he had been updated on the situation at a meeting on Monday and remarked that “we would be going into a space that is very unusual to me”.

NESol was one of several agencies under the Ministry of Science Energy and Technology which became embroiled in controversy over reported breaches of Government procurement guidelines last year.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced in December that the agency would be shut down and its functions subsumed into the parent ministry to, among other things, resolve the issues of administrative failures that were highlighted. The deadline was initially revised from September 30.

Ennis said he anticipates that the period between the closure and November 30 ould be used to present persons with details about their entitlements and iron out personal liabilities such as motor vehicle loan payments.

He said a meeting with staff is planned for today, but that the communication would have started much sooner in order to gauge whether the workers’ sentiments towards the terms.

Ennis noted that some workers are to be rehired immediately, but that those numbers were not known. He explained that the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology (MSET) would engage these employees on fixed term contracts until the new structure for the entity within the ministry is determined. He said this process should be concluded by March 2020.

“There isn’t going to be a cooling-off period. Its functions will continue at the same place, but there will be no NESol, it will be a division of the ministry with public sector designation,” Ennis said.

He noted that the union was not necessarily in favour of short-term contracts and that workers would not be comfortable leaving before finalising their employment, especially those with short tenures, who “wouldn’t be looking forward to much”.

“Everybody would’ve preferred to have all matters settled before their employment is terminated,” he stressed.

The Government had said $100 million would be designated for redundancy payments for staff at NESoL, and the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica – another agency of the MSET – as part of the Government’s rationalisation programme.