Prime Minister David Thompson alights from MP2 as he arrives at Parliament Buildings to present his first Budgetary Proposals as Prime Minister. (MG)

CASES OF EXCESSIVE SPENDING and fiscal irresponsibility by the former Barbados Labour Party administration are still being discovered by the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Government.

These cases, says Prime Minister David Thompson, can only be explained "in terms of a regime that assumed that it would rule forever and that no one outside their Government would ever discover the mess they were creating".

Thomspon, also Minister of Finance, outlined a number of things which he said his Government had to address during its first six months in office, as he delivered his Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals in the House of Assembly yesterday.

Among them was what he termed as the "scandalous and sordid financial messes" with the Greenland Landfill, the Gems Project, the National Housing Corporation (NHC) building at Warrens, Kensington Oval, the "new Barbados-to-US currency" Prison, the bathroom facilities at Silver Sands and the wastage and squandermania at the Urban Development Commission, among others.

"I have not even begun to deal with the ABC Highway project, or the $35 million in roads in St Philip for which financial provision had not then been made," he said.

He added that his Government also had to find $26.5 million for the Barbados Defence Force pensions, and the new Barbados Coast Guard expenditure, the Hardwood Housing scam and the latest case of the Mobil Refinery clean-up.

Thompson continued even further, listing the $33 million to clear the NHC overdraft, $27.8 million for the Transport Board, $5 million for the Enterprise Growth Fund, and $8.1 million for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as areas for which funding had to be provided. (JR-B)