Cruiser’s First Call on Falmouth Port now Feb 17

Cruiser’s First Call on Falmouth Port now Feb 17
By Horace Hines (The Jamaica Observer)

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s (RCCL’s) Navigator of the Seas has been rescheduled to arrive at the Historic Falmouth Port next month, the Observer has learnt. The new date was decided to ensure that both the port and the town were ready to offer the ship’s approximately 4,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members a positive experience, a source close to the development said.

News of the rescheduled inaugural call came on the same day that work on the $7.5-billion port was brought to a screeching halt by more than 450 workers who went on strike in protest over the deduction of taxes from their end-of-year bonus payments. Claiming that they have been short-changed by the contractors, the angry workers vowed that they would not return to work until they have been reimbursed.

“We will continue to demonstrate for the whole week if we don’t get our money, and the whole year of it takes the whole year,” one protester shouted. But Jes Olsen, project manager for the contractors, Danish firm Pihl, said that the workers did not have a full understanding of how the taxes were calculated.

“It is very difficult to explain to the guys because they have a tendency of not wanting to listen and understand,” Olsen said in a phone interview with the Observer yesterday afternoon. “They don’t understand that they have to pay tax on all income and that the salary sheet reflects that.”

He further explained that the workers received bonus payments in two traunches; the first payment was considered as an advance, while the second payment reflected income tax and all other statutory deductions, which infuriated the workers.

“We paid out Christmas bonus in-between two salary payments which shows that tax deduction was done in the project bonus and then they are taxed 100 per cent on the last payment... and that confused them totally,” Olsen explained.

Yesterday, Councillor Garth Wilkinson (PNP, Falmouth Division), who is also an accountant, met with representatives from the Ministry of Labour, Inland Revenue Department and the management of Pihl. Wilkinson claimed that it was proposed that if the workers resumed working today they would be paid in full for yesterday.

Secondly, it was proposed that Pihl provide an advance payment of $10,000 to the workers to assist with back-to-school expenses and that the contractors would deduct either $1,000 from the workers’ salaries on a fortnightly basis or the full amount from the end of project payment.

Navigator of the Seas was scheduled to make its first call on the port this week. However, yesterday Olsen said that there were still “a few things” left to be done “to get 100 per cent ready for the ship”.

Tourism authorities are looking forward to the arrival of the ship, which is expected to provide a significant boost to the local economy. The world’s largest cruise ship, RCCL’s Oasis of the Seas, is scheduled to make its inaugural call on the Falmouth Port on March 22.