Mike Truscott, the managing director of Equipment Rental Finance, one of the companies at the centre of the Five Oaks repossession fiasco, launched the ‘adopt an employee’ scheme yesterday.He said: ‘It is the wrong time of year for someone to face unemployment, especially as they are already down having not been paid for the last month.’Jackson’s dealer principal Paul Collier revealed yesterday that the company had re-employed 117 people who formerly worked for Five Oaks.
That leaves around 30 workers in Jersey who are still out of work following the garage’s collapse.Mr Truscott said that he would make the first move and asked former Five Oaks staff to apply to his office for work.’The idea is to adopt an employee for a maximum of three months at a previously agreed salary level,’ he said.
‘We do not have any vacancies, but we will start the ball rolling and need 30 other businesses in the Island to do the same.’Equipment Rental is one of the finance companies which has had to call Islanders since the collapse of Five Oaks to tell them that the cars they bought in good faith were in fact legally owned by the finance companies.One reader, Mark Smith, discovered that the car he paid £10,000 cash for in August is owned by Equipment Rental because the garage never handed his money over the finance company.Mr Truscott said he was now aware of three people who were in Mr Smith’s position.’We will not be turning up on this man’s door step to repossess the car,’ he said.
‘We are not that sort of business, but it is our car and at some stage we will have to talk to Mr Smith.’
