As government presses ahead with phase three of its public sector cost-cutting exercise, the National Union of Public Workers has requested an urgent meeting with government officials to discuss the matter with a view to seeing if they can prevent some of the expected job cuts.

Government has already cut about a thousand jobs across the public sector as part of the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation Program that aimed to trim central government and state agencies by about 15 hundred employees.

The administration has stated that rationalisation in central government has been completed and that statutory corporations would be the main focus of the next stage of the program. For example the National Productivity Council is to be closed by the end of next month, while the National Initiative for Service Excellence and the Barbados Tourism Product Authority have already been disbanded.

NUPW President Akanni McDowall tells Starcom Network News that the union is still waiting to get specifics about the next round of staff cuts but hopes some other approaches will be considered.