FRANKLYN NOT IN FAVOUR OF BOSS

Another rush job.

That is how Opposition Senator and trade unionist, Caswell Franklyn,
has described the Barbados Optional Savings Scheme (BOSS) initiative,
whereby Government is seeking to create fiscal space by giving public
officers bonds as a portion of their salary, to fund capital projects
and generate economic activity in the country. His comments came
yesterday afternoon during the debate in the Senate, as he reflected
on the concepts put forward before the BOSS programme was settled on,
and lamented that Government seldom gets its right the first time.

“They come with something, they have to go back and fix it, come back
and fix it again – they don’t think things through to the logical
conclusion. That’s the problem I have with this Government. They
always have to come and fix it. I was one of the persons who was
completely opposed to the forced savings and I don’t know what the
national meeting turn was, so I didn’t know if to be supportive or
opposed, I couldn’t understand it myself,” he told members of the
Upper House.

His comments came as he argued that BOSS was in fact a clever way of
printing money, given that under the International Monetary
Fund-approved Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation programme,
Government is not supposed to print money.

“You said you are giving the public servants bonds. You can’t give
them bonds; you can’t. The laws don’t allow you. What would have been
best is if the Government had said to everybody in the country – ‘I’m
going to float a bond for you and if you want some, you can get some.’
You know why you can’t do that? You have to drive fear into the public
servants to take it, because nobody will trust this Government with
their money again after you gave that haircut last year. My credit
union lost $10 million – a very expensive haircut,” he added.

He went further, contending that Government should not be extending
the BOSS programme to the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), because SOEs
do not fall under central government and are governed by the same laws
as privately-owned companies.

“I don’t like shoddy work and this is shoddy,” he maintained.

Franklyn went on to urge Government not to victimise those who choose
to opt out of the scheme and is asking Government to give the workers,
especially those in acting positions, the assurance that they will not
be disadvantaged if they do not take the bonds. He made the call as he
noted that while a lot of workers want to help, they are not in a
financial position to do so.

Franklyn’s comments came as he urged Government to rethink what it
will do with the money. He made the call while suggesting that they
could hold off doing any major capital works for the time being.

“You really don’t want any capital works now. What you should be doing
is putting money in the economy, so that people can spend it... My
little bit of common sense tells me that you don’t take away money
from people who usually spend it.”

He continued, “I was telling you all along that public officers, most
of them spend all of their money when the month comes, they don’t have
any provisions to save anything. So if you want to stimulate the
economy, give them more money and they would spend it.” (JRT)