Government Pays Frustrated Vendor Over $5,000

After VI Consortium reported on the frustrations of Carol Donowa, the owner of La Petite Daycare in Frederiksted who was distressed by the length of time it took the Dept. of Human Services to pay her the more than $5,000 it owed for several months, and after Human Services Commissioner Christopher Finch received a letter from Sen. Nellie Rivera-O’Reilly requesting that action be taken on the matter, Donowa has communicated to VI Consortium that the government had finally paid all that it owed.

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to VI Consortium with the quick action they took to publish my story of frustration of late childcare payment,” Donowa said. She also thanked Sen. O’Reilly for her swift action and Commissioner Finch for responding.

“Thanks [also] to Senator Nellie Rivera-O’Reilly for assisting and ensuring my late childcare payment along with other providers payments were paid on December 15, 2014. [And] thanks to the Commissioner Christopher E. Finch for responding to Senator Rivera O’Reilly’s letter,” Donowa said.

In her letter to Finch, which was obtained by VI Consortium, Rivera-O’Reilly said she had received “a number of calls from day care operators indicating that they have not been paid (some of them since September).”

The letter pointed out that many of the daycare facilities employ workers who haven’t been paid because payroll hasn’t been enough to cover them. It also said that as the holiday season approaches, such discrepancies create “extreme stress and financial hardship on employees and operators of these facilities.”

O’Reilly’s letter spoke to the frustration that Donowa had been experiencing with the Dept. of Human Services, a reality that perplexed the business owner.

“I really don’t know what is going on with the Government,” Donowa told VI Consortium last Friday. “As far as I know, the money that is supposed to be used to pay us on St. Croix, is money that was being sent from Washington every October — that money is supposed to be there to pay us [vendors].”

With the government making its payment to Donowa, she can now move ahead with normal operations of her daycare. It was just last Friday Donowa had “no idea” where she would find funds to pay her employees.

VI Consortium extends best wishes to Donowa and her staff.