The Freundel Stuart-led Government has been urged to put a ‘Comprehensive Incomes and Prices Programme’ (CIPP) for Barbados and use it to deliver immediate and significant financial ease to the working and middle class.
This plea from David Comissiong, president of the People’s Empowerment Party (PEP), who says these citizens are too hard-pressed.
In a statement, he said a CIPP, in this “special period” of economic recession, would ensure that all groups assumed their fair share of the burden, and engineer a movement to greater fairness in salaries and income distribution.
“Over the past three years or so, working and middle class Barbadians have been buffeted by a punishing and constantly rising cost of living, increasing unemployment, unconscionably high public utility and land tax rates . . . and at the same time, [they] have been witnessing the spectacle of a class of privileged Barbadians flaunting opulent lifestyles, engaging in parasitic and corrupt practices, and pulling monthly salaries that are dozens of times the size of the salary of the minimum wage earner,” Comissiong noted.
Read the full story in today’s DAILY NATION.
