ONE OF OUR most distinguished sons of the soil, the late Rt Excellent Sir Frank Walcott, once described this society as a crisis society. We get around to solving problems when they become crises.
Were he alive today, he could point to the situations at the Sanitation Service Authority and the Barbados Water Authority as prime examples of his thesis.
He could also include aspects of the National Housing Corporation and the Ministry of Transport without batting an eyelid, although he would have to look just a little harder to discover some of the same malaise in the manner in which the Ministry of Finance has been tackling the fiscal deficit.
Having designated certain ministerial responsibilities to ministers it has come to the stage where the prime minister has had to raise his voice in support of the public interest for us to see the kind of active response that was too long in coming to deal with the very important problems of water shortage and the non collection of garbage.
But for Mr Stuart’s actions behind the scenes one would have thought that his administration in its second coming was hell-bent on proving that sometimes things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.
Unfortunately it has taken the crisis of the absence of water for the public to be properly updated on this issue as well as on the disposal of the unsightly mountains of garbage, which provide hospitable territory for rodents and disease carrying mosquitoes and flies, which have a field day at the expense of Barbadians and visitors who end up in their flight path.
Now we do not regard garbage and water as social issues only, rather we regard them as socio-economic issues and hope that the respective ministries so regard them. No economy can survive or flourish in the absence of potable water, and neither can an economy flourish if the workforce is riddled with diseases of one kind or another brought about by ill health resulting from open and unhealthy heaps of waste and garbage.
In an economy which promotes tourism and international business services as major planks, there is an even greater need to ensure reasonable supply of potable water and a clean and healthy environment as the foundation upon which we can build the technical framework to attract tourists and business entrepreneurs. Without the proper foundation then edifices will crumble, and all will be lost.
Hence, while we commend the Prime Minister for the recent quickening of pace to resolve water and garbage issues, we are calling for greater assertion by him for the Minister of Housing to get on with sorting out the myriad problems facing the National Housing Corporation, in particular getting its estates surveyed to expedite the sales of units in housing estates. That too has reached crisis proportions, and if it is necessary for the cracking of the proverbial whip, then the public expects action and leadership.
The Ministry of Finance as always is a special case. It is more prone than most ministries to external forces outside its control. Yet, as Prime Minister Sandiford has shown, the exercise of strong political will can often save the public interest from calamitous harm. The present state of the economy requires similar political resolve now.
The fiscal deficit and increasing taxation and low growth has placed the economy between a large rock and a very hard place. Perhaps this ministry too may require the direct diktat of Prime Minister Stuart to speed up resolution of that crisis. But that is often the power and price of leadership.
