THERE WILL BE no more terminations and there has been "no night of long knives".

Prime Minister David Thompson stated this last night in answer to a question about a number of sackings after his Democratic Labour Party won the Government on January 15.

In an interview televised live on CBC-TV, he said: "there will be no other firings."

Indicating there would be changes in the diplomatic corps, Thompson said, "I took a conscious decision, even though it is within my purview to change them, to give [the diplomatic and consulate representatives] time to demit office."

He continued: "I said to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 'This is Barbados, we have a good international reputation' so we are going to give the consulate and diplomatic representatives time to demit office to present their credentials again and to bid farewell and we have already indicated that there will be some changes in that regard."

Thompson recalled that previous Governments made changes "where ambassadors were given two days to leave the official residence . . . . We have
had some of those very unseemly scenarios."

He said that people who had been terminated were consultants with contracts withthe previous Government while only three people in statutory corporations were relieved of their duties including the former Director of the Urban Development Commission, which he thought was with just cause.

The others, he said, were paid out or their contracts came to an end.

Thompson said despite former Prime Minister Owen Arthur's efforts to explain away their hiring as some kind of charity, that was not the way it was to be done.

"There are procedures like welfare, national insurance and so on to deal with those situations. So those persons who were terminated were consultants; a special envoy on science and technology, former Minister Philip Goddard. . . other persons were on the Government's payroll.

"Almost every backbencher and candidate of the Barbados Labour Party in the last election was receiving money via consultancy from the public purse. We had to bring those things to an end," he charged, adding that the courtesy once was to offer a resignation when Government changed.

He continued: "That is why the line of what is right and what is wrong has to be established in public affairs in this country."