A week ago a friend sent me the article on Barbados published in the Daily Telegraph of 15th March 2018. Written by a Julia Bradshaw, a Business editor for the British newspaper, the piece is entitled, ‘The stench of economic decay is overwhelming Barbados.’ It begins with the alarming statement, ‘Barbados stinks.
It really does.’ At first I was not sure whether to take the words literally recognising current concerns about the South Coast Sewerage Project or to see a more figurative, metaphorical inference on the state of my country as a whole.
The idea that my homeland stinks was alarming and on the face of it, a bit offensive.
But what was the Telegraph article implying and did it carry any objective validity? The Julia Bradshaw piece raises three major concerns. The first is of course, the issue of the South Coast Sewerage stench and its impact on locals and tourists alike.
The second is the broader issue of the quality or lack thereof in the governance of contemporary Barbados and finally there is the fundamental concern about the ostensible ‘decay’ in the local economy. After all, the article’s headline does note ‘the stench of economic decay.’
On the problem of the South Coast, the article does Barbados a considerable disservice even though it draws attention to other issues that have been of legitimate concern to thinking Barbadians for some time.
Interestingly a few days later I received a call from a somewhat irate Barbadian- Canadian asking if I was one of those Bajans who like the proverbial ostrich was burying its head in the sand, with its backside in the air and refusing to admit certain obvious unflattering truths about our country.
The Telegraph article does Barbados a disservice in that it gives readers the impression that the whole of Barbados was flowing with sewerage which was flowing on the beaches, ‘24 hours a day’ and infecting much of the population with ‘violent bouts of gastroenteritis.’
Truth be told the beaches are not affected by sewerage and the red flags on the beaches were more a warming against recent rough seas that have battered much of the coastline. Tests to the coastal waters show no evidence of bacterial pollution.
Besides the impression is given that the Barbadian authorities are doing little about the problem. This is patently untrue. Water Authority and Sewerage Project personnel are working intensely to solve a very complex problem. Barbadians believe that if they ignore a problem it will go away.
The problem is allowed to worsen and the locals expect a quick fix. It is difficult to understand why the writer who claims to have once made Barbados her home, would give such an adverse opinion and why the Telegraph would so readily print it without consultation with the local tourism and environmental authorities.
Then there is what the Telegraph writer calls ‘the stench of economic decay’ that in her words is ‘overwhelming Barbados’. The existential reality is that the economic fundamentals of the local economy are weak, threatening to become increasingly so and adversely affecting many aspects of our social well-being.
The foreign reserves have fallen and continue to do so with at last count just over four weeks of imports. What is more, Barbados faces sizable repayments of foreign debts in the next two years. Successive downgrades by the rating agencies now number twenty making it costly to borrow on the external markets.
The government clearly lacks the revenue to sustain social needs. Shortage of sanitation trucks means that garbage goes uncollected for weeks. An amazing volume of household and industrial refuse is dumped in our gullies and rural pathways.
Inability to purchase new busses for the government run Transport Board means that Barbadians wait for hours at bus-stops to get to and from work, adversely affecting worker productivity. Failure to pay sugar planters means that in mid-March 2018 the 2018 sugar crop has not yet begun. The nation’s roads are in the worst state of disrepair Barbadians have ever witnessed.
None of these negative facets of our collective reality can be denied. They raise serious questions about governmental competence and managerial capacity. However on the local talk-radio, the partisan fools or the foolishly partisan continue to find a way to deny the inconvenient truth.
The Telegraph writer is not wrong in the conclusion that: ‘The rapid deterioration that has taken place in Barbados over the past few years on the back of the country’s malaise is shocking.’ What is most worrying is that for all the talk about getting on an economic growth path, the prospects do not appear promising.
The tourist industry, our major foreign exchange earner may now be under increasing threat, given the fall-out from the South Coast debacle. Already this season there have been cancellations and visitors, including my Winnipeg friends who have been coming here since the mid-1970’s are expressing a reluctance to return, at least not in the immediate future.
Then there is the stench of the politics or is it the politics of the stench. The growing talk about corruption in Barbados would lead one to think that Barbados is becoming something of a kleptocracy. Transparency International has always rated Barbados favourably.
The suspicion holds that Transparency International may be as much in the dark on corruption in Barbados as are most Barbadians. Given the strict construction of the laws governing libel and slander which obviates real investigative journalism, given the closeness of the society and the lip service given to transparency and accountability, it is difficulty to truly know the extent of venality in Barbados.
The absence of freedom of information legislation only serves to breed malicious rumour. The threat to the Barbadian economy did not start in 2008, but it has significantly worsened since then. Speaking in the Senate on the Appropriations Bill in March 2015 Senator Darcy Boyce, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office noted that Barbados had lost more than $1.5 billion in revenue over the last 7 years due to a fall in taxation from the international business sector.
The weaknesses in the economy were evident for those not too blind to see them. The problem is a failure to respond promptly to the challenges that face us, hoping that they might go away or that could be fixed by some ill-conceived so-called ‘home grown’ recovery plans. Several informed experts have advised the Barbados government to go to the IMF, but to no avail.
In 2014 a report on problems facing the South Coast Sewerage system in relation to structural defects, limited capacity, given infrastructural developments in the Hasting-Worthing area and most importantly the imperative of a continuous maintenance program was issued. Very little was done. Instead as the Telegraph article pointed out, we chose to build a spanking new administrative building off the highway.
We like new buildings on which ‘Honourable’ Ministers of government like to hoist their names for posterity. In spite of all the academic chatter from our ‘intelligentsia’ about reform, reconstruction and repositioning, in Barbados it’s always business as usual. The struggle continues.
