Last night on this newscast, you heard Works Minister Boots Martinez defend firings from his ministry. And today Prime Minister Dean Barrow backed him up. He said that indeed there were people hired to do something close to nothing – and the should have been fired.
Dean Barrow,
“From what I heard last night, those firings are entirely justified. Like I said I would make no apologies based on what I know. When I hear the Minister saying in PG when the budget and the scope of work only provides for 30 places and there are 70 persons, it is not like he is firing the 40 so he could replace PUPs with UDPs, it is because they are not doing anything beside collecting a paycheck. That has to be entirely justified.
In terms of other open vote workers who are losing their jobs so that a UDP can take their places, again while you must act with a degree of humanness, man that is the inexorable law of politics, that’s the inevitable consequence of a change of government. There are people who for 10 years have not been able to catch a break because of what has been happening. We are going to say to them now that even with respect to open vote workers where we can move we will do nothing, no no no. I am sorry but there will be as it where collateral damage arising from the fact that we have to try and even out things.
Remember that where public officers are concerned, again those that were put in place by the PUP, we have difficulties in moving them because of the security of tenure system there. But so if even with open vote workers we can’t do anything to try and level out the situation or to lean now in favor of people who for ten long years were in the wilderness, I don’t think we will be worth our mandate.”
