Government’s capital works push will soak up some of the unemployment fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
So said Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance Dr William Duguid, who was speaking to the media yesterday following resumption of the $200 000 refurbishment of the old Barbados Water Authority (BWA) headquarters in The Pine, St Michael.
He said that while it was difficult to project the dent in unemployment figures in the coming months, the number of projects by his ministry was in the double digits. He said they could be divided into two categories – housing, and rejuvenation of old Government-owned buildings.
“In the Ministry of Housing we have 14 different sites that we will be working at over the next few months to be able to get people back to work . . . . In terms of the employment numbers, it is going to be hard to put a figure because even after you count the contractors and the tradesmen, those would not be all of the people who would be earning from these projects. You then still have the delivery trucks, all of the support staff and so on,” said Duguid. (CLM)
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