BY THE END of the year several postal workers will have to park their motorcycles because of new measures in the recent Budget.
That’s the fear of assistant general aecretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Delcia Burke, who says public workers will bear the brunt of the heavy taxation imposed by Government, notably the 2.5 per cent increase on VAT and the tax on travel and entertainment allowance.
Speaking on the NUPW’s monthly radio programme, The Public Worker, aired on the CBC’s Q 100.7 FM, Burke said postal workers who currently receive $367 in travel will now have to pay $73.56 more in income tax and ply the same routes though their salary would not have increased.
She further noted that court marshals would lose a minimum of $138.46 and like postal workers, they were being affected by the removal of subsidies on gasolene brought on by the 2008 Budget, increases in oil prices and an increase in road tax.
“I believe that before the month ends some of these people will have to put down their vehicles . . . their motorcycles and stop travelling,” she lamented, “otherwise they would have to put their hands in their pockets and with all the other things surrounding the Budget I don’t see how they would be able to do that.”
The veteran trade unionist also said the rise in bus fare from $1.50 to $2 would harshly affect youth commissioners and workers from the National Assistance Board (NAB), and she maintained that the latter group would now have to pay tax on the weekly allocation of $15 for bus fare.
Burke also queried the Minister of Finance’s statement that the salaries of Government ministers would be taxed.
She said that the Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries Remuneration and Allowances Act CAP 8 stated that ministers were not required to pay tax.
Meanwhile, NUPW general secretary Dennis Clarke has said he was not confident Government would be able to sustain jobs in the Civil Service.
“We have not had anything in writing.
We’ve already called publicly for this guarantee to be put in writing.
“You may recall that towards the ending of last year the late Prime Minister David Thompson had said they were securing jobs and there would be no layoffs in the Public Service, but subsequent to that statement we would have layoffs at UDC where the Minister of Finance was the minister responsible for social care,
“And there were layoffs that could not be justified up to now, and that is why we have taken note of this statement that there would be no ‘wholesale layoffs’ and this is what has us a bit concerned because the door is left open for there to be layoffs in the Public Service.”
(ES)