The time has come for Government to shed some of its weight at the top, says president of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), Verla De Peiza, who is charging that Mia Mottley experiment of assembling a large Cabinet in order to lighten the workload, has failed.
De Peiza told Barbados TODAY that the performance of a number of the ministers has been nothing short of incompetent, while others simply have no work to do.
“I absolutely believe that some of those ministers have done such a bad job that they should be fired. I am not talking about just reshuffling because apart from those who are doing a poor job, there are others who are simply just occupying space and up to now we don’t understand what they are doing even though it has been 500 days since they took office,” De Peiza charged.
The DLP leader was especially critical of the performance in the public services related to garbage collection, transportation and water, portfolios which fall under ministers Trevor Prescod, William Duguid ad Wilfred Abrahams respectively.
“It seems like the Government is trying to take the country somewhere internationally but leave its people behind. This is a recipe for anarchy and descension. You have conversations overseas about climate change and how it will impact on people but at home garbage is piling up with rodents and flies on the increase and diseases are in the offing because we have garbage everywhere. There is no place that garbage is not piling up,” said De Peiza
She added, “When persons come and do their own assessment, they realize that workers cannot get to work because the better bus service that was promised has not been delivered. We were promised electric buses, but none has arrived yet. We have workers that can’t come to work because there is no water. You have failed to come up with a solution because these persons are simply bankrupt of ideas but yet they sit and collect their money.”
De Peiza also took aim at the junior ministers in the Mia Mottley administration, suggesting that even after more than a year on the job, precious little has been shown that would justify the need for their continued existence in the posts.
“A lot of the junior ministers are never heard from and we never see any results. This comes at a time when you are telling the people of Barbados that they have to tighten their belt because of the taxation that they are facing. So Government needs to be trimming its own expenditure,” she stressed.
In justifying her 26-member Cabinet shortly after the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) captured all 30 seats in the May 2018 elections, Mottley contended, “Given the dire state of our economy and the tremendous work that will be involved in rescuing and rebuilding this country, the salaries of a few extra ministers are insignificant, given that there will be extra savings from the containment of wastage and the curtailment of corruption in my Cabinet.”
She also pledged to hold ministers to “very high standards of efficiency and productivity,” noting at the time that she had structured her Cabinet in such a way as to embrace new concepts and initiatives.
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The same BLP trolls who actually supports this gov’t that has turn B’dos into a beggars society.Your programmed comments are obsolete .The BLP is in charge of the dwindling affairs of the gov’t.