BLP legacy (2003-2007): Urban Development Commission (UDC) built 183 homes for the aged and indigent ($8.8 million), repaired 180 houses ($8.3 million), eliminated 29 pit toilets ($277 004) and built 102 septic tanks ($582 614); Rural Development Commission (RDC) built 218 homes and repaired 423, provided 78 bathrooms, dug 492 wells, built 273 septic tanks and installed electricity in 273 homes.
The impressive list of accomplishments detailed above only partially represents the outstanding record of the Urban Development Commission (UDC) and Rural Development Commission (RDC), two institutions created by the Owen Arthur administration to ensure equal development across our nation, seriously attack poverty and stimulate entrepreneurial activity among ordinary Barbadians.
That is why people are shocked (though not surprised) at the latest and most barefaced of all moves by this Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Government to further pervert the noble objectives of the UDC and RDC into the kind of obscene dispensers of political patronage for naked election purposes that had hitherto been alien to Barbados’ traditional political culture.
For we clearly remember the reign of political terror unleashed on the staff of the UDC and RDC when the DLP won the government in January 2008, resulting in the mass elimination of incumbent employees because they were perceived to be BLPites.
Since then these organizations have caught the public’s attention for all of the wrong reasons. Starved for funding by the Government, their service to the needy public has ground to a virtual halt, and they are best known nowadays for occupying offices in the heart of Bridgetown for which their rent jumped from some $17 000 to $62 000 monthly for each institution.
Based on the DLP’s track record to date with the UDC and RDC, it’s no wonder the public is very alarmed at what the DLP is capable of doing with the many millions of dollars it will be able to get access to, because of the recent amendment to the Catastrophe Fund Act, passed by the BLP in 2007, providing for an NIS-administered fund to give relief grants to individuals whose homes were damaged by any natural disaster.
The DLP’s rationale for the amendment was unspecified difficulties in accessing money in the fund, contributed to by the working public. Now the UDC and RDC will be able to claim unspecified refunds, from the fund, rather than going to Parliament for customary supplementaries that would be subjected to lawful public scrutiny.
Furthermore, with the Government’s admission of the its poor response to house repairs two years after Tropical Storm Tomas, it would have been better to give priority to grants directly to suffering individuals, rather than allow two highly politicized agencies to get their grubby hands on the finances first.
Notably, for three years the DLP could not afford to contribute money to the fund as the policy requires, making the public the sole contributor through the NIS. It therefore smacks of attempting to create a slush fund with the DLP’s unseemly rush to make it possible for the UDC and RDC have access to the funds minus the necessary checks and balances, with a tough election looming.
Now we clearly see the emptiness of the DLP’s boast of being a “responsible government” by not “priming the pump” in the Budget. Not when they have the UDC and RDC. To do otherwise would obviously inflate the deficit.
• Beresford Leon Padmore is a pseudonym for the Barbados Labour Party.
