Basseterre, St.Kitts (October 3rd 2010):-As per an announcement made by Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas just after being elected to office in the 2010 January 25th General Election the end of September will see hundreds of civil servants being sent home as part of the governments new initiative to combat a spiraling and stifling national debt brought about by years of government mismanagement and wastage.
Thursday 30th September marked the end of the line for untold hundreds of civil servants who were sent home in a government austerity measure intended to address the National Debt crisis.
Up to this date the exact number to be sent home has not been revealed . However the IMF in it’s report has recommended that the government payroll has to be cut by at least 1/3 . There are currently 5000 civil servants employed by the government 1/3 of which will amount to 1500. The Prime Minister indicated at a recent Press Conferece that some 300 will be sent home. Such a tiny number is unlikely to put even a dent in the 41% of government revenue spent on wages, salaries and pensions which the IMF has declared is unacceptably high. In any event when this 300 is added to the 250 recently laid off from the Port Authority, the 150 laid off when RDS ceased operation at the end of October and the hundreds of others that have been made jobless over the last year a grim picture emerges.
“After years and years of gross mismanagement by this Denzil Douglas led labour government our country finds itself in a very dire economic state,” said People’s Action Movement Leader Lindsay Grant. Never before in our country’s history in any similar period has any government had to lay -off or terminate hundreds of civil servants. This is unprecedented and it shows the very dire economic situation our country is currently facing.
This massive removal of civil servants is just 5 years removed from the thousands that were essentially sent home with the closure of the Sugar Industry. In the last 6 years alone of this labour government we have seen well over 3000 job losses not only to government workers but also to workers at the industrial site who have watched and suffered the loss of their jobs with the c losure of at least 3 factories in the last 3 years making hundreds and hundreds of persons jobless. This is totally unacceptable and the government must be made to account to the people about the millions that have been borrowed and spent which has now resulted with civil servants and others having to pay with the loss of employment,” Grant Lamented.
Economists have suggested that more lay-offs are expected over the next year and this coupled with the introduction of the 17% VAT in November will cause undue and extremely burdensome hardships on the poor and even middle class people of the federation.
People’s Action Movement Leader Lindsay Grant opined “I am extremely concerned about how the hundreds of persons that have been sent home over the last 10 months and how they will cope with a pending 17% VAT in November How will they support themselves without even the prospects for a job or at the very least a job that is comparable in terms of renumeration to their last? Even more troubling, is how will this bankrupt government pay the millions of dollars in gratuity payments that have suddenly come due?”.
In March of 2010 Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas painted a grim economic picture of the federation. A vast contrast to the rosey portrait that was painted during the 2010 election campaign.
