DURING THE COURSE of this week, the Freundel Stuart Government will, by virtue of its own words and past failings, come under a higher than usual degree of scrutiny. How it responds will no doubt either offer it some respite from criticism or galvanise the view of many that it is prone to failure.
One minister in particular who will be under the gun is Minister of Transport and Works Michael Lashley, who has responsibility for two of the most glaring failures in public administration in recent times – the large scale deterioration of our roads into pothole-filled obstacle courses, and the state of public transport that has now become a blight on national productivity.
The third area under watch will be the Ministry of Education, given the situation at Combermere School, where there is still no certainty that teachers will be returning to the Waterford campus where they have been repeatedly falling ill, while complaining of an overwhelming noxious odour – despite the announcement from the ministry that classes will resume tomorrow.
We don’t believe Minister Lashley will disagree with our conclusion, and the opinion of countless motorists, that our roads are now in their worst state of modern times – despite the categorisation of the situation by Prime Minister Stuart as a “transitory inconvenience”.
It is clear that one of the reasons why the minister and his Government have suffered such a sustained period of criticism is that very little came out of his pre-Christmas promise to offer immediate relief. Now he has given a new timeline: the war on potholes begins in earnest today and will run for about six weeks.
In addition to Ministry of Transport and Works personnel, the country has been told that the services of C.O. Williams Construction, Rayside Construction and Brathwaite’s Construction, all of which operate their own asphalt plants, have been subcontracted to help eliminate the potholes. Unfortunately, we’ve not been told where these private operators will be working, what percentage of the work has been allocated to them and what will be the cost to taxpayers. Perhaps that will be disclosed this week.
We sincerely hope, however, that the quality of patching will not mirror what we have seen in the last three weeks or so, since such an approach will only turn out to be a waste of public funds.
Thousands of commuters will also have their eyes on Mr Lashley’s promise to have more buses on the road from tomorrow when school starts, as well as to have an arrangement in place to allow private operators to enter Transport Board terminals and pick up passengers during peak periods to ease congestion and wait times.
Too many commuters have complained that during what should have been a period of respite over the last three weeks when schoolchildren were on holiday, they got no ease. The number of available buses remained inadequate and the waits just as long.
Perhaps Barbadians will benefit from the presence of Minister Lashley in the terminals this week to see first- hand whether his promises materialise, or whether the new year has opened with the same old frustrations.
We are certain that his colleague, Minister of Education Ronald Jones, knows that teachers at Combermere, and beyond, have been displaying a high level of on-the-job frustration and the slightest hint of anything being wrong there is likely to result in an instant withdrawal of labour.
To be frank, we cannot disagree with those who suggest that the more than one-year-old problem at Combermere has not been handled in the best way, and that in the grand scheme of things it is too small a matter to have generated such disaffection.
The first full working week of 2017, tough as it will possibly turn out to be, ought to serve as a warning to Government that as it moves closer to election, Barbadians will become less accepting or forgiving of its established modus operandi.