Humphrey: Don’t disadvantage Transport Board workers

A government minister has told financial institutions not to deny Transport Board employees loans out of the belief that they may soon be jobless due to the proposed upcoming changes at the statutory corporation .

Senior Minister and Minister of Transport and Works Kirk Humphrey said the development was a worrying one and urged the banks to use their “greater conscience”.

Minister of Transport and Works Senior Minister Kirk Humphrey. (Photo Credit: Jenique Belgrave/Barbados TODAY)

“People in the Transport Board have told me that because they are hearing this conversation around changes there, (banks) are not giving the people loans or they are not allowing them to access credit.

“First of all, we have no intention of disenfranchising the people at the Transport Board. Many persons, if they come with the arrangement – and I will speak on this once the unions have settled it – once they come with us will be better off than they are now,” Humphrey explained.

“In relation to the Transport Authority nobody is going to be disadvantaged. So I’m saying to the banks, when you see persons coming from the Ministry of Transport and Works for a loan, do not deny them a chance to feed their children, buy a car, repair their house, because you have now determined yourself that the people are going to be out of a job. It is not true.”

Addressing the Barbados Labour Party’s St Michael West branch meeting on Sunday evening,  the minister also touched on the island’s recent signing of a Stand-By Arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), assuring Barbadians that the move was not a loan, costs nothing and was done to act as a safety net for citizens.

“The Prime Minister recently announced that we are going to have this IMF standby agreement. It costs the government nothing, really. It is that you have an arrangement where if something goes wrong, instead of having to go through the formal processes and things that take forever to access resources, you can have the resources almost immediately. That’s what it means by standby,” Humphrey said.

“It is like if you have a credit card and your credit card allows you $10,000 in credit and you don’t spend on that credit card. You don’t pay the credit card apart from the yearly fee to keep it, right? You don’t spend on it. You don’t have to pay on it. Yet, I am listening to the Opposition talk saying ‘we have now entered into a new agreement with the IMF’. This is dangerous.”

Humphrey stressed the step will ensure that in the event a crisis arises, “we can in quick time respond, build back houses, clear the roads, and put money in people’s pockets”.  

(JB)