2024-01-07 19:18:26
From January 24, 2024, LIAT will definitively stop its rotations following 67 years of activity. The Caribbean transport company, which only has one plane left in service, leaves behind around a hundred employees who were dismissed without compensation.
According to Barbados Today, a Barbadian daily, a letter dated Thursday January 4, 2024 and signed by Cleveland Seaforth (the administrator appointed by the Administrative Court of Antigua and Barbuda), was sent to the last employees of LIAT.
The letter confirms that the company will cease its activities in the coming days, on January 24, 2024 precisely. “No compensation will be paid to the 90 dismissed employees”because for several months, this Caribbean company operated at a loss, with only one plane, following the other planes were seized to settle the company’s debts.
However, some employees will remain working on the permanent closure of the company.
After much thought and evaluation of current operations, a decision was made by the court-appointed administrator to permanently cease all commercial air routes effective January 24, 2024.
Extract from the letter sent by Cleveland Seaforth, administrator of LIAT
Cleveland Seaforth therefore informed the employees that the company did not have the means to pay the compensation. According to the administrator, the company is “aware of its obligations” towards them (unemployment, annual leave and salaries).
All compensation will be calculated. YOU [les salariés] will receive a letter in 45 days, when the amounts will be established.
In Antigua and Barbuda, the government is set to launch a new entity called LIAT (2020). But this future company, the opening date of which is not yet known, will not be responsible for the debts of the old organization.
In 2020, during the pandemic, LIAT, already heavily in debt, collapsed. Operations ceased overnight. As a result, hundreds of agents found themselves unemployed without the slightest warning. They have not received their salary from the last month worked or their vacation pay.
In 2022, Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, the main shareholder country of LIAT, had hoped that his neighbors in CARICOM (the Caribbean Community) would be interested in the future of LIAT, but without success .
Even the other States already shareholders (Barbados, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) did not want to continue financing the carrier which continued to lose money.
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