S & S Service Corp. workers remained on the job Friday at the Bovoni landfill, despite the fact that they had not been paid.
And although Harold Attidore, accountant for S & S, said the workers are there hoping money will be found Friday to pay them, one senator pointed out that no part of the legislation passed in Thursday’s special senate session addressed the financial problems of vendors.
A spokesperson for Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg said Friday that the senator has continued to pursue the commissioners of both Finance and Public Works to find money to pay S & S, but as of noon no commitments to pay had been made.
Finance has been invited to attend public hearings on landfill problems set for next week by the Committee on Planning and Environmental Protection, according to Donastorg. "They should be part of the discussion about the landfill," Donastorg said.
And so the saga of one vendor continues under the old adage in St. Thomas that if one person would pay his bill, that money would pass to the next person and the next person and pretty soon everyone would be paid.
That original person is the V.I. government, if you follow the story of S & S.
And that vendor, S & S owner Siewdath Sookram, is even less likely to be paid now than he was last week or last month, since the government did not even meet its $13 million biweekly payroll this week.
The repercussions for many V.I. businesses are frightening, as Sookram's story shows.
Sookram is president of S & S Services Corp., the company that provides services at the Bovoni landfill. He is owed $2 million by the V.I. government.
"The government has been behind for the seven years we've worked there," Sookram said. But the bill has been around the $2 million mark for three years.
As a result, Sookram said he is about $800,000 in debt.
His workers haven't been paid for two weeks and he doesn't know how he is going to pay them this week. He owes the Internal Revenue Bureau $300,000. He owes the federal government $50,000. He owes one of his vendors who provides fuel for him more than $20,000 and expects to be cut off from his fuel supply this week. The bank that holds the mortgage on his home is threatening to
foreclose.
And as if that weren't enough, Sookram said he has been paying $1,600 a month in interest to Banco Popular on a $200,000 line of credit that is completely used up and can't be extended.
Sookram said Wednesday morning that he will leave it entirely up to the 17 employees now working at the landfill whether they want to
continue for another week without pay.
Though acting Public Works Commissioner Harold Thompson Jr. said last month he was working on getting some money for S & S Services, Sookram said the last payment he received from the V.I. government was in December 1997. The payment was for $157,000, according to Sookram's accountant, Harold Attidore.
Attidore said he has been functioning as a collection agency, not an accountant.
And the question for Sookram is how long he can remain afloat without collecting what he's owed — or at least part of what he's owed — by the V.I. government.
