The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2011-2012 represent the best social and economic option package for Barbados, says Member of Parliament for St John, Mara Thompson.
The Estimates are “the best that can be done under the circumstances at this time”, she said in the House of Assembly yesterday.
Contributing to debate on the Estimates, Thompson took the position that Government cannot avoid factoring in the global economic developments that have “crippled” a number of Third World economies.But she argued that despite the problems, “this package removes nothing that we already have . . . and what we have is quite a lot”.
She told parliamentarians the Estimates still offered Barbadians health care benefits, job security, development of cultural industries and expansion of facilities for sports. She said there were not many jurisdictions that could make such guarantees in these troubled times.
Thompson chastised the Opposition, saying what it expected Government to do in the circumstances demonstrated it had lost touch with reality.
The Opposition was “totally unappreciative” of the fact that other Caribbean countries had been forced to introduce similar draft Estimates to correct economic problems, she commented. She said she was “leftto wonder where they are living and with whom they are interacting”. She also told both sides of the House that this was not the time to be “playing politics” and practising “one-upmanship”.
