BRIDGETOWN–The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment has ex­tend­ed by 18 days, the dead­line for lay­ing off pub­lic ser­vants fol­low­ing talks with labour unions on Mon­day.Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art said the de­lay would al­low the Min­istry of the Civ­il Ser­vice to gen­er­ate a list of names for those who would be re­trenched as his ad­min­is­tra­tion seeks to turn around an ail­ing econ­o­my.He said the unions–the Bar­ba­dos Work­ers Union (BWU) and the Na­tion­al Union of Pub­lic Work­ers (NUPW)–would be in­volved in the process.

"We had set the 15th of Jan­u­ary for the tak­ing of the first bit of ac­tion. That date must now be va­cat­ed be­cause of the chal­lenges posed to the Min­istry of the Civ­il Ser­vice in even gen­er­at­ing the list to be af­fect­ed," Stu­art said."But we are cer­tain now that by the end of this month, we should be able to deal with those is­sues de­fin­i­tive­ly and fi­nal­ly and of course be­tween now and the end of the month the union will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther re­port on those is­sues," he added.

Last month, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced the plan to cut pub­lic ser­vice jobs in a bid to save Bds$143 mil­lion.It said it would al­so in­sti­tute a "strict pro­gramme of at­tri­tion" across the cen­tral pub­lic ser­vice, fill­ing posts on­ly where it is ab­solute­ly un­avoid­able, over the next five years, end­ing 2018-2019.The gov­ern­ment said it in­tends to trim the ser­vice by 3,000 jobs and had hoped to be­gin lay­ing off work­ers by Jan­u­ary 15.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art said the lay­offs would not in­clude both bread­win­ners from the same house­hold even as he in­sist­ed that the lay­offs were un­avoid­able.He said a hu­mane ap­proach would be tak­en in prepar­ing the list.