The way the Government of Barbados has generally conducted its business over the past 60 years or so has made us, in many ways, the envy of others across the region.
For all our successes, however, we have had some distinctive failures and one of the most glaring of these, particularly in post-Independence Barbados, has been in our maintenance of public buildings. In fact, it would not be wrong to conclude that in too many instances our efforts could, at best, be recorded as dismal failures.
In recent times though, faced with increasingly dissatisfied public servants who have demonstrated repeatedly that they are not prepared to work indefinitely in unhealthy conditions, Government has been moving its staff into modern complexes.
Examples of these would be the new Supreme Court Complex on Whitepark Road, the National Housing Corporation’s building on Country Road, the National Insurance Department’s complex in Culloden Road, the Warrens Office Complex, Omni Tower and Baobab Tower, all in Warrens.
By contrast, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), despite all the efforts of recent times to improve it, the old NIS building on Fairchild Street, the former home of the Government Electrical Engineering Department on Lower Bay Street, the abandoned old Supreme Court complex on Coleridge Street, Queen’s Park House, Carnegie Library, Culloden Farm, and the former offices of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health on Jemmotts Lane stand as monuments of embarrassment to our failures as a country.
As far as maintenance is concerned, there are distinct advantages to having modern buildings to look after – but modern buildings too become old. With Government’s dismal track record of maintaining its buildings, one only has to ask how long it will be before there is really little distinction between the old and new.
Stand outside the new Supreme Court Complex and look up and around and already you will see early signs of neglect. Walk beyond the entrance to the Warrens Office Complex and look at the number of broken fixtures and see if you do not find yourself asking: how old is this building again?
The most maligned public building in Barbados over the past three decades must be the old NIS building, but truth be told it is a building that is half-a-century old – by no stretch of the imagination can it be considered an old facility. It might have had design flaws, but its biggest “flaw” has been its lack of maintenance.
Those who are responsible for these public assets need to get their act together, if not we will find ourselves grappling with a number of “old NIS buildings” before long.