When a person loses their job – it's bad news personally – but usually it's not fit for the evening news. But that's not true for Anthony "Ladies" Flores. He's just a security guard at the KHMH – and was one for 11 years – but when he got fired recently – he came to us claiming he was being cheated of his gratuity. Bearing in mind the history we've had with him – we decided to take up his story.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
When we first met Anthony Flores in 1998 – he was a security guard at the KHMH who used his own initiative to make himself the hospital's gardener. He was confident, enthusiastic and robust. And this is him today; he's had better days: the father of one has been fired from the KHMH – where he says he'd gone from the garden to the morgue, and from planting trees to smoking them – bad habits which cost him his job.
Anthony Flores,
"It is true they find the marijuana yes and the cocaine in my system but I don't do it on the compound. They came to me a day when I was drinking and he said the sister said I have to go take a alcohol test. I didn't did take the test that time then. I think about one week after I was forced to go and take a rum test. Now when the result came out back, dah cocaine and weed positive in the blood but they didn't find me smoking that on the compound. I could always say before I joined that job I wasn't in to weed, cocaine, or rum but that morgue work which I was dealing with, sometimes you need a tranquilizer."
Jules Vasquez,
So you are not arguing that you have taken cocaine, marijuana, or rum, that's not your argument. You have taken that?
Anthony Flores,
"Since I worked at the morgue and then I became alcoholic with marijuana and cocaine. For nine years I've been dealing with that morgue work with guts and human parts. Man you need to take a little high. I go to work everyday and the one thing I try to do is discipline myself that I don't smoke on their compound. I don't do that. They fired me now and all Mr. Tim and the man Longsworth is telling me about is four days pay after 11 years and a half of working."
Jules Vasquez,
So you're not so much arguing about your termination?
Anthony Flores,
"I don't really want to go back there, I just want them to give me justice."
Jules Vasquez,
You pay for the…?
Anthony Flores,
"For 11 years service because I have a kid to feed, I have Miss Jane, I have to pay for my house."
The hospital said that he was given four weeks pay as per the law. As for his gratuity, that is under review by the accountant general's office.
