Public Sector workers have been better off under the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration, benefiting from permanent appointments, salary increases and help with the cost of living, BLP candidate for St James Central Kerrie Symmonds has declared.
Symmonds, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade who was previously responsible for the tourism, energy and commerce portfolios, said this was a record that his party could proudly run on ahead of Wednesday’s General Election.
He contrasted this with the Democratic Labour Party and its political leader Ralph Thorne, who he argued have “a record to run away from”.
Symmonds was speaking on Saturday night during a BLP campaign meeting in the National Cultural Foundation’s car park at West Terrace, in support of St James South candidate Sandra Husbands.
He mentioned the St James South and St James Central communities of West Terrace, Oxnards, Wanstead, Oakwood Park, Thorpes, Hoyte’s Village, Prior Park, and Bagatelle, pointing out that they “are characterised by perhaps the densest population of some of the public officers and public service administrators of this country”.
“I am proud tonight that I am part of a party that over the course of the last couple of weeks, has been sending out letters to all of our public servants, 2 900 and something of them would have received, or [are] in the process of receiving, letters of permanent appointment, ending years of acting, putting our public officers in a position where they now have job security,” he said.
He recalled that in spite of Barbados being in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, “in 2022 we appointed 6 000 public officers who had been acting in Barbados for in excess of three years”.
Symmonds dismissed “the politics of pity” and calls to “give the Dems a chance”, reminding the audience that “between 2010 and the year 2018, there was no salary increase for the public officers”.
“I want you to compare and to contrast. We were elected in 2018 and before the year 2019 come . . . there was a five per cent wage increase for the public officers of Barbados,” he said.
“Not satisfied, we then went in 2023 and had a three per cent [salary] increase, still struggling to come out of COVID-19, still in an IMF programme. In 2024 we come back again, another three per cent [salary] increase, just climbing out of the IMF programme.”
Symmonds also mentioned the commitment from Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley that following a re-evaluation of all public sector jobs, “there must be another wage increase before the end of the year 2026”.
He said on the cost of living that the last DLP administration, which, like the BLP, governed during a cost of living crisis, imposed the National Social Responsibility Levy, which meant that “everything imported into Barbados was increased by ten per cent”.
Symmonds said that the difference under the BLP government was that it did a number of things to ease the cost of living, including the prices compact with supermarkets, a cap on fuel prices at the pump, a value added tax (VAT) ease on electricity bills, and expanding the basket of VAT-free goods. (SC)
