(Barbados Nation) Barbados has lost about 16 000 private sector jobs over the past five years, says Opposition St Philip South candidate Anthony Wood.
And he is warning Government that while its immediate focus might be on saving public sector jobs, it also had an equal responsibility to protect private sector employment.
Speaking at a Barbados Labour Party (BLP) mass meeting on Sunday night at Rices, St Philip, Wood charged that the current Democratic Labour Party administration was overtaxing workers in order to keep thousands of public servants employed and that Government was refusing to talk about the stress it was putting on the private sector through the high costs of doing business.
The economics lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI) also told the crowd that Government was not creating the kind of environment that would allow the private sector to grow.