Sometime during this weekend the moment of truth will arrive for 3 000 public sector workers whose employment with the Government will come to an end. Whatever the true reason for the termination it will not be, and cannot be, a happy moment for these unfortunate ones, whether they were temporary, casual or permanent employees.
None of these labels will disguise the emotional fallout that attaches to a termination of employment, especially where one has small dependent children, or where the worker has entered into financial commitments structured on the fact of that employment. No right-thinking person can rejoice at this situation, but it now seems that the die is cast!
The general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, in a comment on the lay-offs, remarked that one way or other the society has to consider that it will be called upon to pay the costs of these lay-offs. One way or other, the society pays, either by maintaining employment or in suffering from deviant social fallout!
He opines that some incidents of crime, some mental and other stress-related health challenges, and matters of that kind may be the social price paid by the society in the wake of such social dislocation as the termination of that many workers from the Public Service.
As much as one wishes to dismiss the statement, one has to respect the long front-line experience of voices such as the general secretary’s. We trust that his views will galvanise those workers whose duty it is to administer the social safety net of unemployment benefits or redundancy payments to move with all deliberate speed in processing the claims of the terminated employees. No less, speed and sensitivity will also be required of public officers employed in the Social Welfare departments of Government.
Barbados’ arriving at this juncture cannot make for an easy time either for policymakers such as the Minister of Finance or the technocrats in his and other ministries. But it serves to underline the delicate balancing act that must respect the dictates of policy when juxtaposed with the financial realism of all such policies that call for the spending of public funds.
This balancing act calls for careful oversight of the fiscal deficit, because in poor post colonial societies total revenues cannot always pay for development and also cater for the needs of the vulnerable, the poor, the aged and the infirm, all of whom may call on the public purse for their very existence. And so it was the technique of the fiscal deficit that Mr Barrow carefully used to pay for free secondary education in his budgets in the early 60s.
We accept the reality of Government’s policy in relation to the termination of public sector employees, but we know that our political and social stability and cohesion have been achieved on a bedrock of enlightened social policy. It saw us through the dark days of the 1990s. Timely and sensitive administration of those policies will also sustain us in these times.
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