By:
Cara L. Foster
THE National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) feels personally attacked by the Government of Barbados, given the abrupt removal of their President Akanni McDowall from his former senior acting post.
During the brief press conference that was held at the NUPW headquarters yesterday morning, Acting Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers, Delcia Burke, said that “the NUPW sees this as an attack, not only on the NUPW, but on the Trade Union movement”.
The Acting Deputy General Secretary was referring to the recent removal of their President McDowall by the Government of Barbados from the post of Health Planner 1 to a lesser position, Environmental Health Assistant 1, and replaced by a person with, reportedly, less qualifications than McDowall. Burke said that the NUPW did not agree with this action and believed that he was removed from his position without a reasonable cause.
Burke said that this issue is an extremely serious one and vowed that no stone will be left unturned, in terms of dealing with this matter. It was revealed that the NUPW requested to have a meeting with the Chief Personnel Officer to resolve the matter, but because the matter was receiving attention from the Personnel Administration Division, the request could not be met.
Burke went on to reveal that without any prompting from the NUPW, other unions have voiced their support in having this matter dealt with and added that if push comes to shove, they will call on the other unions to support the action and join them, until the matter is finally resolved.
The NUPW outlined that they believed that McDowall was being victimised because of his recent actions, where he was quite vocal on a series of topical issues concerning Barbados, and holds that his reversion from a senior post to an entry level post was abrupt and done without a valid reason. Because of this, they are upset with the actions and believe that something needs to be done to quickly resolve the matter.
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