WE ARE HERE TO HELP!

That was the clear message given by Sir Roy Trotman yesterday as the Government, Social Partners and Public Sector put their heads together in an effort to reduce the skyrocketing cost of living in Barbados.

Sir Roy, president of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), made the promise at the Ministry of Finance's one-day public/private Sector Consultation on the cost of living at Sherbourne Conference Centre, Two-Mile-Hill, St Michael.

Before a packed house of employers, members of Parliament and members of civil society, Trotman reminded all that CTUSAB had been at the forefront of the movement to protect employees, especially low income workers, and had even provided a proposal to a previous Government, and they were not about to walk away now.

In his preliminary contribution to the consultation, Sir Roy said it would now take a stronger exercise in fellowship and sacrifice, for Barbados, as a country, and Barbadians as a people, to tackle the recent rise in the price of commodities and services across the country.

He noted that the idea by the Government for another consultation was a "sound consideration", and reminded them that just as it was in the previous consultation, CTUSAB's main two subjects of consideration would again be employee protection, and affordable prices for consumers, mainly low-income earners.

Urgency

"We are committed to this. And it is even more urgent now because of the greed we see in the world market; because of the greed we see that has caused market prices worldwide to go up significantly."

"We have to work out what has to be done, and it has to be done in a way we did it before. Jobs must remain priority number one, followed by the attainment of affordable prices all around," Sir Roy said.

"If we are to put a cushion, or shock absorbers for those least able to handle the high cost of living, then the social partnership continues to be interested in being at the forefront of the effort," Sir Roy concluded.

"Our responsibility in this exercise is to ensure that all are winners, or that the losers are so few that we may be able to set up programmes of re-establishment for them in a way that there is no major fallout within our community."

He said the Social Partners had pushed in their initial discussions for an arrangement which does not see an approach to lay-offs of Barbadians. Sir Roy also noted that this year's exercise would differ from the one in 1991, in that no IMF or World Bank invasion would be accepted and "we are not going to agree to the terms of settlement to be one where people lose their jobs, their families, their houses or their lives". (BA)