Another stopped picking up calls entirely. The third called twice with the word asurances each time.
The banks moved within 2 days. Two major business accounts were flagged for review. A supplier waiting on payment did not receive it.
A contractor on the Eastern District project contacted the site manager. The site manager called Derek.
The Eastern District construction project was halted. Our 38 workers showed up to the site on Monday morning and were told to go home and wait.
No timeline was given because there was no timeline to give. Derek received that phone call while sitting at the breakfast table and he put the phone down and looked at his plate and did not touch anything on it again.
38 families. He sat with that number in his chest all morning and did not let himself look away from it.
The workers did not go quietly. Three of them, older men who had worked on Oay construction sites for over a decade, showed up at the company’s main office that same afternoon.
They asked to speak to someone in charge. The office manager called Roel who called Derek.
Derek drove to the office himself. He sat across from the three men in the small meeting room near the entrance.
They were not angry and they were worried. One of them had a daughter starting secondary school in 2 months.
Derek told them the truth. He said the project was paused because of a legal review that was not connected to the work itself.
He said they would be paid for the days they had already worked. He said he could not promise a restart date, but he could promise he was fighting every day to make it happen.
The three men looked at each other. One of them nodded slowly. They shook his hand before they left.
One of them said, “We know who you are, sir. We have worked for you long enough to know.”
Derek drove home with that sitting in his chest. Then a letter arrived from the city development authority.
It was formal and carefully worded, but the meaning was plain. IO Construction’s pre-qualification status for future government tenders was being suspended pending the outcome of the ongoing investigation.
A suspension was not a ban, but it meant that any new contract the company might have won in the coming months could not be pursued.
Robel said it was expected. He said it was manageable, but manageable and painless are not the same thing.
Derek’s accountant came to the house that week and sat with him at the kitchen table with printed spreadsheets spread between them.
The accountant was a careful man who had managed difficult numbers for 15 years and never raised his voice.
He went through the figures slowly. The frozen accounts, the paused project, the suspension from new tenders and the legal costs altogether created a gap that was real and growing.
And the company was not in danger of collapse, but it was bleeding steadily. Roselene brought them tea during that meeting and set it down without interrupting and left quickly.
But she heard the accountant say one sentence before the door closed behind her. He said, “If the review extends past 6 months, we will need to make some decisions about staff.”
She walked to the kitchen and stood at the counter with her hands flat on the surface.
She thought about the site workers. She thought about the office staff she had seen come and go in 2 years.
She thought about what that word decisions always actually means. That evening, she did something she had never done before in 2 years at this house.
