Former Minister of Social Transformation Hamilton Lashley is appealing to the Mia Mottley-led Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration to ensure that vulnerable groups are not squeezed by the austerity measures in the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation Programme (BERT).
During a recent interview with Barbados TODAY, Lashley advised Government to relook its social policies and review the impact the austerity measures are having on the poor and vulnerable in society.
“Nobody across Barbados can accuse Hamilton Lashley of being separated from the issues because I live in the ghetto too, I don’t live in the heights and the terraces as most people would want people to think, or want people to believe.
“I am right in the middle of poor people between the Pine and Hall’s Road and those communities and I hear them crying on a daily basis. Government got to be careful. I understand the necessity of readjusting the economy. But it ain’t what you do, it is how you do it,” Lashley said.
Lashley indicated that one of the Government’s departments that concern him, as it related to how the needy were allegedly being treated, was the Welfare Department.
“One of the places I have serious concern with, and Government must take a look at, is the Welfare Department. There are too many complaints from the poor and vulnerable about how they are being treated at the Welfare Department when they go there and nobody cannot come and tell me differently because I go down there almost on a daily basis and accompany people down to that Department.
“So Government has to be very mindful and careful about the treatment coming from those persons that are placed there to deal with the poor and vulnerable in our society,” Lashley said.
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