The recent behaviour of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) provides pristine guidelines as to how an organization should not be run.
That it is Government-owned and controlled amplifies the high level of expectation and disappointment.
The majority of staff felt motivated to show their disgust with a management decision by walking off their jobs early Monday morning and assembling peacefully in the yard in the Pine in clear view of thousands of motorists passing on the ABC Highway. Not unnaturally, this sight attracted a high level of public interest.
The public at large sensed that all was not well and expected to be told by CBC what was happening. But the wait was in vain. In its major radio newscasts at one and five o’clock, nothing was said to stem public curiosity. Starcom Network, its competition, led with the CBC walkout on its 12:30 newscast.
Industrial action is part of the normal architecture of democratic societies. At the state-funded broadcasting station, in full public view, it is news.
To see well-known broadcasters abandon their posts and congregate in the yard is news.
Why they found it necessary to take such action and the corporation’s reaction is news.
It may have been embarrassing to the management, but the truth will always out adding to the perception of a cover-up and deepening public curiosity. Surely, it should not have been difficult to write and broadcast a story on their newscasts happening right under their noses?
Just a week before, Parliament legislated a $40 million lifeline to prop up CBC. In these very difficult times, that taxpayers’ money and glaring recent inaction would encourage questions to proliferate about its ability to function competently in the public interest.
Too often, CBC gives the impression that it exists solely to promote and protect the interests of the ruling political party.
The decision by the Leader of the Opposition to register his disgust at this crude partisanship by refusing to let them broadcast his Independence Day message was a shot across the bow which should have signalled significant outrage and the need for corrective action.
It is said that experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. The management of CBC seems chronically mistake-prone. It is the sincere hope of all Barbadians that public reaction to recent experiences will bring them to early Christian understanding. Hope springs eternal!
Air Passenger Duty
Last year when the British government introduced the Air Passenger Duty, which was structured in such a manner that it was higher for passengers flying to the Caribbean from London than to Los Angeles and Hawaii which are much further, one reason advanced for its introduction was that it was intended to help protect the environment, a so-called “green tax”.
It has had a significant impact on British arrivals not only for tourists but also on the large numbers of Caribbean people who settled in the “mother country” and fly home from time to time to reconnect with family and friends. Outrage from both groups and airlines was prompt and vociferous, forcing an admission that it was flawed.
Strong representation was also made by Caribbean tourism ministers, high commissioners in London and the multi-lateral Caribbean Tourism Organisation. The impression was given that the Cameron government would take another, more favourable look at the alleged “green tax” in time.
Last week, it was announced that from April 2012, far from a downward revision there will be a ten per cent increase. Willie Walsh, the former British Airways boss, now head of the International Airlines Group, said: “The first thing to remember is that it is not a green tax. Not a penny of this tax goes to environmental issues. The government has made that clear.”
Caribbean people will recognize that once again the British government has sold its former colonies a pup. There is a crisis crippling the entire Eurozone and economic growth in Britain is projected to expand by a mere one per cent. With inflation exceeding wage increases, less growth resulting in less tax receipts and more welfare recipients, home drums beat first and loudest.
Indeed, things are so bad that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is warning that the country faces six more years of severe pressure on public spending to protect its credit rating. In these circumstances, it comes as no surprise that he will raise every penny he can by every legal means necessary, including increasing the Air Passenger Duty.
This places additional stress on our tourism planners and functionaries to devise new long-term strategies to counterbalance the latest increase on passengers originating in our most productive market, projecting a further six years of negligible economic growth resulting in a fall-off in travel to top-rated, sophisticated Caribbean destinations like Barbados.
Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat. Email ppksimmons@hotmail.com