Receiver to settle Morgan’s Harbour redundancy payments
THE RECEIVER-MANAGER of Morgan’s Harbour Limited, Wilfred Baghaloo, said the company will begin redundancy payments to terminated workers on April 27.
The payments have been outstanding since September 2013 when the approximately 40 workers, some of whom had been with the hotel for 32 years, were technically made redundant, he said.
Morgan’s Harbour Limited was placed in receivership on September 23, 2015. After three years of negotiations with Grand Hotel Excelsior, the Malta-based company which bought the hotel, as well as the Government and the debenture holder, the sale of the Port Royal-based property was completed on January 6 of this year.
FINDING SOLUTIONS
Baghaloo explained that finding solutions to the various challenges was key to ensuring that the optimal outcome was achieved for the employees, the debenture holder and other stakeholders.
The receiver-manager said the purchaser has started to renovate the hotel and is expecting to reopen for the upcoming tourist season. Prior to that, the hotel did not have any major renovations in decades, he said.
Baghaloo said the University of Allied Workers Union, which is representing the workers, was actively involved in arriving at the amounts payable and due to the former employees of Morgan’s Harbour Limited.
“It is with great satisfaction that we were able to engineer a transaction that allows the company in receivership to settle this liability which is so long overdue. Furthermore, we are doing this payment is this period of great uncertainty for many of these workers,” said Baghaloo, in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic now affecting Jamaica.
Grand Hotel Excelsior took possession of Morgan’s Harbour Hotel in January this year, following a court ruling ordering the former operator to vacate the property.
In December, the Court of Appeal gave Lashmont Financial Services a month to vacate the hotel, an order which upheld a February 2018 Supreme Court decision made by Justice Carol Edwards in favour of the receivermanagers for Morgan’s Harbour, Wilfred Baghaloo and Caydion Campbell.
The sale comes more than four years into the receivership.