P.U.P. Senator blasts Govt. over job cuts
These are not good times for Said Musa and his People’s United Party government. Out of money and out of credit, facing major lawsuits at home and abroad, under political assault not only from the Opposition, but from two exceptionally irate back benchers… the last thing the party needed was a knife in the back. But that’s exactly what it got today when its own lead Senator and former minister, Dickie Bradley, lashed out against his own government. The occasion was the graduation ceremony for the Youth Cadet Corps, but in a rambling address that was part lament and part lecture, the P.U.P.’s Southside point-man made it clear that he is not a happy man, particularly when it comes to the recent dismissal of long time government workers.
Senator Dickie Bradley
?I looked at the television and I saw Miss Moody gets a letter from her C.E.O. that after thirteen years of service she will go home. How much money are we saving by sending a single mother at home when the very system of government that we are working under, which we borrowed from the British where there is a minister then a permanent secretary… It works in the U.K.; it has not and is not working here in Belize.?
?A country which is spending millions of dollars, millions of dollars on foreign embassies that cannot justify their existence and is saying to people, you go home because one hundred and seventy-five dollars a week is costing us too much, is unacceptable. That we have to make hard decisions in the country, that we have to cut out the waste and the fat and when something is not working you fix it. And I want to take time out this morning because I know from my personal experience that the Minister responsible for youth is extremely concern over these matters. It is not an easy decision for a politician to make, but he has given the go ahead that wherever changes can be made, make it; you don?t have to come back to him. Wherever you can save and amalgamate and put in progress and in place a better programme, go ahead and do it. I don?t want to hear that Youth Cadet is getting ready to take in another intake, forty-seven young men out of which half of them will not stay in the programme and we have the same staff the same food budget the same expenditure.?
Bradley’s address also criticised G.O.B.’s privatisation policy, waste and duplication in the Youth Department, and top heavy administration across the government service.
It is not clear whether Dickie’s displeasure was due to righteous indignation or the fact that a number of those workers fired were his close supporters. It should be noted that following his defeat in the 2003 election Bradley was hired by government as a special advisor to the Prime Minister.
