BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos–The merg­er of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies Lime and ri­val Flow will soon claim the first causal­i­ties–staff.

The gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Bar­ba­dos Work­ers' Union (BUW) Toni Moore made the dis­clo­sure to the me­dia yes­ter­day, but in­di­cat­ed it as too ear­ly to say how many peo­ple will be sent home. She ac­knowl­edged, though, that with the pur­chase of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al–Flow's par­ent com­pa­ny–by Ca­ble and Wire­less which op­er­ates in the re­gion as Lime, lay­offs were ex­pect­ed.

"Up to this point, there has been no for­mal in­di­ca­tion as to the ex­tent of those im­pacts, but what the com­pa­ny has said is that in those ar­eas where it rec­og­nizes that it may need to shed labour that every at­tempt would be made to en­gage the Bar­ba­dos Work­ers' Union to make sure that the process in ex­it­ing work­ers is be­ing up­held, and that every ef­fort will be made as well to en­sure that, to main­tain the com­pa­ny's com­pet­i­tive­ness, the best per­sons will be kept back," Moore said at a me­dia con­fer­ence.

Un­der the March 31, 2015 deal worth just over US$3 bil­lion, Lime has de­cid­ed to drop its name in its Caribbean op­er­a­tions and go with the Flow brand.

CMC