Blunder

A top union leader has charged that political padding of the public sector has now returned to haunt Barbados and create significant hardship for workers.

Responding to a report on the proposed closure of the Urban and Rural Development Commissions (UDC and RDC), as Government moves to streamline operations of state agencies, the president of the National Union of Public Workers, Walter Maloney, said trimming the public sector fat made very good sense.

Speaking to the DAILY NATION, Maloney stated that no unionist wanted to see employees lose their jobs, but he was adamant that there was unnecessary overlap in the functioning of the UDC, RDC and the National Housing Corporation (NHC), among other public sector agencies.

“The point is you set up two entities to basically do the work that the NHC was mandated to do, with a few exceptions. They have been overlapping. I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs but sometimes the Government as an employer has to be careful when they set up entities like this whose mandate sometimes may not be as clear and precise as we think . . . . You have a central body responsible for housing and then you set up two individual bodies, one looking at rural Barbados and one looking at urban Barbados, but basically performing core functions like what the major body is doing,” he said.

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