Over 30 retrenched Transport Board workers descended on the Opposition Leader’s office in Parliament Buildings yesterday evening, screaming “unfair” and accusing Government of breaking its promise not to send home the sole breadwinners of Barbadian families.
Most of the workers, who got their termination letters between Monday and yesterday, accused the Board’s management of using its own criteria to fire workers after Government had stated that the lone criterion should be “last in, first out”.
“You got people here that have worked 19 and 20 unbroken years and you have others being reinstated all like now but did less time than we?” asked an angry Andrew Atherley, who has been driving buses for over ten years and was terminated on Monday.
His unanswered question was echoed among the other drivers, fuel porters, clerks and security personnel who complained to Opposition Leader Mia Mottley in the hope of getting legal redress.
“Yes, it is unfair, we being victimised,” some shouted from the ground floor lobby of Parliament’s West Wing.
“The Government came on my television and defined the word ‘temporary’, and that the only persons who were to go home were temporary staff . . . but the Transport Board has come with its own criteria of attendance, sickness and less-than-adequate performance, and you now have staff members being sent home and temporary ones working,” one worker, who requested anonymity, told the DAILY NATION.
