A Government minister is telling public servants not willing to work to turn around the economy to go home.
“I will send a strong message to public sector officers: if you are not on board to help us turn around this economy to get projects going, then go home,” outspoken Minister of Industry and Commerce Donville Inniss said yesterday.
He also took exception to the National Union of Public Workers’ (NUPW) proposals to help the Government grapple with a debt problem, including the one where the union called for across the board cutting of salaries and a “last in, first out” approach. He called that “very lazy”.
“These are not the days of sitting and getting a pay cheque; those days are over. We have to be far more productive than we’ve ever been. Nobody owes this country a favour; we have to get out of this mess,” Inniss said.
The minister told the DAILY NATION that the country must face reality and he was not about a public relations exercise.
“The problems in the economy are structural and can’t be dealt with by placing a piece of plaster over them. I looked at what the NUPW said and I appreciate and understand that it has constituents to address – I can’t fault them for doing that – but there is a certain reality we have to face.”
