Barbados is more than an economy, it is a society!
General Secretary of the Barbados Workers Union Toni Moore made this reminder today as she delivered her opening remarks at the meeting of the Social Partnership which was brought up from its original date of August 18th.
Moore chided government for “inadequate foresight, failed communication and lack of definite action” in confronting the challenges facing the country’s economy.
She said that at the time of the last Social Partnership meeting in March, the union was eager to participate in “mapping out a strategy” to take the country out of its economic crisis and the “crisis of confidence.”
However she lamented that “five months later the malaise is much deeper on all fronts.” Touching on the issue of public confidence once again, she said many had questioned whether the “failure to act somehow might match an incapacity to act” and address the island’s economic issues.
She knocked the government for its insistence that today’s meeting would be nationally broadcast for the first time ever; terming it “a peculiar format” which she said reflected a “preference for form to precede function.”
Nonetheless, Moore said the labour movement acceded “because we realise that if no other function is served, at least this arrangement could be the start of an exercise … to open up transparent debate not only within the social partnership but with all members of society.”
She called for commitment from all at the meeting, saying that “if the social partnership is allowed to work we would be able to build on the legacy and the capacity” of the mechanism and today’s meeting could be “the first of many steps in the right direction.”
