Long-standing Member of Parliament Denis Kellman has attacked the trade union movement over its demand for a 50 per cent cut in the National Social Responsibility Levy (NSRL).
Kellman, the Minister of Housing and Lands, has charged that the unions were being used by the Opposition Barbados Labour Party and he suggested that their demands could help destroy the economy.
“The trade union movement has allowed the opposition to fool them that [they] could come and ask a government to reduce revenue and at the same time increase expenditure. That is what you call total madness and that’s the recipe for destruction of an economy and that’s a recipe for all Barbadians now to march,” the St Lucy representative said.
His argument in the House of Assembly yesterday came a week after four trade unions – the Barbados Workers’ Union, the National Union of Public Workers, Barbados Secondary teachers’ Union and the Barbados Union of Teachers marched in protest of the new tax measures, among them a 400 per cent increase in the NSRL.
The unions subsequently advised member to go on a go-slow in further protest.
During debate on the Offshore Petroleum (Amendment) Bill, 2017, in the House of Assembly yesterday, Kellman told legislators that members of the Democratic Labour Party could not agree to any measure that could “destroy country Barbados”.(WILLCOMM)
