“Give me de vote and watch muh!”
These remarks were made by Leader of the BLP Mia Mottley on Thursday night at the launch their mini edition manifesto titled People’s Manifesto – Building The Best Barbados Together, at their public meeting, held at Kingsland, Christ Church.
During her fiery speech, Mottley gave a synopsis of the manifesto that was distributed to the thousands of eagerly waiting supporters.
She explained several things, including the BLP’s Fist Six Months: Mission Critical Policies And Actions.
The Urgent Agenda highlighted the following:
- Rebuilding our Foreign Reserves- to 15 weeks of import coverage
- Dealing with the debt choking our economy
- Bringing tax relief to over taxed Bajans
- Reducing threats to the Financial Services Sector
- Helping people to live and pay their bills
- Arrears and refunds Government owes to people
- Protecting, people’s health- fixing the sewerage crisis, removing the garbage all over Barbados
- Putting buses back on the road
- Getting rid of plus sized potholes
- Alleviating water woes
- Making Bajans safe (by reducing the number of firearms in the hands of civilians and in communities etc.)
- Empowering young people
- Stamping out corruption
- Revitalising sugar by settling the monies owed by Government to the industry which employs approximately 5,000 Barbadians and meeting with all stakeholders to draw up a plan for the future viability of the industry and set milestones to ensure accountability for realizing the plan
- Preparing Barbados for the Hurricane Season
The Barbados Labour Party also promised that measures will be taken to reduce the number of foreclosures by working with banks to establish a Troubled Mortgage Relief Programme. The reverse tax credit of $1 300 for people earning less that $18 000 will be paid, funeral grants will go up by $500 and a programme to eliminate the 5 000 pit toilets in the island, by using small contractors and community based businesses will be implemented.
The most popular measure however was the removal of road tax, which will be replaced by a small tax per litre on fuel products. Earlier, Economic Adviser Clyde Mascoll advised that people who used the road more would ultimately pax a greater share of the tax, making it more just in its application.
