COW jobs on line

October is shaping up to be the most cruel month of the year for the management and near-500 staff of C.O. Williams Construction.
The three major projects the company is working on in Barbados are all scheduled to end in October and with no others in the pipeline, its leadership is “starting to panic” about the future of hundreds of its construction workers and office staff.
Neil Weekes, general manager, made the disclosure to the SUNDAY SUN in an exclusive interview this weekend at Atlantis Hotel in The Bahamas, where he was attending a CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank conference on Public Private Partnerships In Infrastructure Development And Financing.
Weekes said C.O. Williams was working on the Warrens road expansion, the Holetown redevelopment project that involves the construction of a boardwalk along the beachfront, and the Constitution River Improvement Project in Bridgetown.
“At this time those projects can sustain us, but the issue is that you have to have these things staggered to keep everybody busy.
“The issue is that those projects are very equipment-intensive, which is okay, but we have about 350 labourers we need to look for work for. While those projects are keeping us rolling, we are having problems finding work for the labour,” he pointed out.
He contended that one or two road works projects could easily change the future for these employees and the company.