Chamber against referendum holiday

Posted By Kevin Watler
Thursday, 21 June 2012 7:02 pm

The Chamber of Commerce is speaking out about government’s decision to make July 18th a public holiday.

Government says it made that call to allow more people to assist in the national count. Voters will go to the polls to say whether they support single member constituencies with one vote for each person. But Chamber President, David Kirkaldy, says a day off to vote is not in the best interest of local businesses.

The referendum will need almost 7,600 people to say yes to the question in order for it to pass.

  • anonymous

    Chamber need to keep their noses out of our political affairs.
    Keep out!

  • anonymous

    There is nothing so important at this present time as the referendum exercise, why on earth can’t Chamber see that? This affects everyone’s future. Just goes to show how incredibly out of touch they are and have been for a long time. The important matters that will improve our country and economy and which they should take a positive stand for, they don’t. Unbelievable !

  • Anonymous

    I agree! This is just a wasted exercise which will result in massive loss in revenue to the companies. On the other hand was the chamber not on rooster stating they supported the OMOV. It would appear that certain members of the chamber wants to play both sides and that their members are not in favor of the OMOV, and those members are only using this avenue to support their own agenda’s. Be it political or to support their friends. We need to chambers to be more non political.

  • Alan Roffey

    The suggestion that the Chamber has made is that it is unnecessary to provide a Public Holiday for this referendum. That does not translate into the Chamber not supporting OMOV. 2+ 2 does not make 5.

    The two issues are entirely unrelated. Public Holidays cost local businesses a lot of money in lost productivity and should not be granted willy nilly. Such a grant is a symptom of the kind of populist politics that have us in the economic hole we are in.

    I expect that some of our less aware voters might even make the (wrong) connection that they should vote against OMOV because the current Government wants them to vote “No” and so gave them a paid day off to do it.

    Hopefully Chamber members will educate their employees as to the benefits of OMOV. If it were a working day I would have driven my employees to the polling booth to vote.

    The Chamber is in touch with the private sector businesses that make our local economy tick.
    Government has to stop burdening busness with unnecessary and avoidable costs.

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