Prime Minister Gaston Browne has pushed back sharply against two of the United Progressive Party’s headline election promises, dismissing the opposition’s proposed four-day work week and removal of vehicle import duties as poorly thought-out tactics designed to win votes rather than genuine policy.

The UPP has pledged to introduce a four-day work week for the public sector by 2027, citing benefits to mental health, productivity and work-life balance, and has also promised to remove all import duties and taxes on personal vehicles if elected to office.

But the Prime Minister was quick to pour cold water on both proposals.

On the four-day work week, Browne acknowledged that his own administration had been exploring the concept, but stressed that any such move required proper groundwork before being announced to the public. “The four-day work week is our initiative — we have been consulting with various stakeholders to determine whether or not we could have a four-day work week,” he said, adding that the government was looking at a model of four days in the office and one day working remotely.

He said the difference between his approach and the UPP’s was one of responsibility versus rhetoric. “Just to say hey, it’s going to be four days — let us at least meet with the stakeholders and see how we can have a properly structured program,” Browne said, arguing the opposition had skipped that essential step entirely. “Clearly they don’t have a plan — they are just pulling these tactics. They are not strategic, they are not coherent.”

Turning to the vehicle duty proposal, Browne argued the UPP was promising something that already exists in large measure. He pointed out that taxi operators, teachers, nurses and police officers already benefit from significant duty concessions. “Taxi operators, for example, they purchase their expensive coaster busters — they get all their taxes off, sometimes it’s fifty to sixty thousand dollars in duty alone,” he said. “Teachers and different public servants, policemen and so on, they get one hundred percent — nurses. So they are actually promising something that is already in place.”

Browne also noted that the opposition appeared to have already retreated from their original pledge under the weight of its price tag. “If you take off all the duties and taxes, you are talking about fifty-something million dollars in giveaway — where can you get the money from to replace it? So then they came back subsequently and said okay, it will be fifty percent,” he said.

The Prime Minister framed both announcements as part of a broader pattern of what he called desperate, uncosted electioneering. “They are not strategic, they are tactics in which they are trying to capture the imagination of the people using these giveaway tactics,” he said. “They have not come up with a new initiative — all they are trying to do now is to get into a giveaway war.”

Browne warned that the cumulative cost of the UPP’s various promises could push the country into serious fiscal difficulty, and contrasted their approach with what he described as his administration’s record of disciplined economic management — pointing to a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio and consecutive budget surpluses as evidence that the Labour government delivers on its commitments responsibly.