THE Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Deputy Spokesperson on Finance and Planning Fayval Williams has described Cabinet Minister Mark Golding’s comment that the “business community” is behind the PNP, as “madness”.

“What we see manifesting, through comments like these, is the PNP’s lop-sided and elitist view of the business community. Mark Golding’s utterances are not consistent with the thousands of businesses — whether micro, small, medium or large entities — struggling to survive,” Williams said in a press release Thursday.

“Mark Golding must have hit his head. Which Jamaica does he live in? It cannot be the Jamaica where the dollar is losing value each day. It cannot be the Jamaica where every year, since this Government came to power, there is a new tax on businesses. It cannot be the Jamaica where businesses lost several billion dollars in productive days because of Chick V and continue to lose productive man hours because of lack of water. It cannot be the Jamaica where businesses are owed billions of dollars by the Government which refuses to pay them,” Williams added.

“I don’t know which set of business people Mark Golding is talking to. It’s probably people who must obviously be beneficiaries of the PNP policies, who would consider it madness to change the PNP and disrupt their benefits,” she stated.

Williams said that, as a businesswoman, “the corporate people I speak to are very worried about the lack of growth, the high levels of unemployment and the high crime.

“They see a tight market with shrinking disposable income and shrinking margins. And when I walk in my constituency every day, I see the shops and small business establishments suffering. I hear the higglers complaining that there is no sale in the market. Mark Golding must stop getting high off the smokescreen of his own propaganda and come back down to reality,” she said.

Williams is a first-time JLP caretaker, who will contest the St Andrew Eastern seat against sitting Member of Parliament Andre Hylton of the People’s National Party.

The Jamaica Observer reported yesterday that Senator Golding, in an address to PNP supporters in St Andrew Western,over the weekend said that It would be absolute madness to move away from the PNP Government, just when the country is starting to see the fruits of the sacrifices of the past three years.

Golding also said that when he speaks with leaders within the Jamaican business community, they indicate that “it would be crazy for Jamaica not to return the PNP to Government for another term”.