Government disappointed with labour

A statement attributed to Joint Trade Union Movement leader that JTUM’s request for a moratorium has staved off Government’s planned mass retrenchment of public sector employees at this time “is absolutely misleading” says the Office of the Prime Minister.

“It was always labour’s contention that Government was engaging in mass lay-offs even though that was not true,” an Office of the Prime Minister release said yesterday.

Government was at pains, the release said, to point out that it meant to keep as many persons in employment even as the country’s finances posed a serious challenge to this objective.

The release said, “Notwithstanding this factual situation, labour insisted on asking for a moratorium until December on something that was neither occurring nor was it planned at this time.”

The Office of the Prime Minister expressed disappointment “that its efforts to engage the labour movement with the aim of building trust and cooperation in the national interest can be so easily undermined by self-serving and misleading representation of the facts.”