It is company with a long history of association with the Caribbean which reaches to the period when the islands were colonies of the then British Empire. Having operated under the name Cable & Wireless and in recent times the LIME brand, a negative impression if ever there was one when seen in a cultural context, what do we have?
LIME has extracted enormous profits from a region which is still developing and some might say that it is a region which lacks the resources to be ever world class in the global definition of things. At the top of the list of Caribbean countries contributing to the bottom-line of C&W, now LIME, has been Barbados.
It is no secret that successive Barbados governments have placed a heavy importance on developing an efficient telecommunications infrastructure, and relative to our Caribbean neighbours we have to agree we have done so with some success. Perhaps it explains the generosity of the Public Utilities Board now morphed to the Fair Trading Commission to C&W over the years.
We don’t pretend to know how the complicated system of price-cap works but we understand from the experts that given LIME’s continuing monopoly status the results of such a system is skewed in favour of the monopoly. Despite some of our best brains operating as Intervenors the monopoly has been able to make its London-based shareholders smile perennially.
There is no doubt that an efficient and relevant telecommunications infrastructure is a requirement to creating opportunities to achieve developed status as a country. The cost which Barbados has had to pay to achieve a highly developed state maybe coming back to haunt us.
If we measure the achievements of Barbados by the economic and other indicators which our politicians love then Barbados has done well. The price to achieving a high standard of living has led to an increased cost of doing business. Despite LIME having pillaged and raped Barbados over the years the time has now come to move on to one of the other less-developed islands to repeat the cycle. The decision to shift call centre operations to St. Lucia and elsewhere illustrate the point.
The snippet below was taken from yesterday’s newspaper, the utterance of LIME’s CEO Richard Dodd leaves no doubt as to where Barbados now finds itself. The price we have to pay for being developed you say?
“I already said that we are going to lose staff. I said that last June. I said we were going to lose 1 200 people across the region and move to an end point of around 2 500. So far around 750 people have left the business, so we are well advanced down that path and that would be concluded in the next three to four months . . . . What we announced today is just part of that ongoing process,” Dodd stated.
“Barbados is lagging in our transformation journey. We are keen to get to the end state in Barbados so we can get the business operating really well,” he said.
Source: Nation Newspaper
The knowledge that Sir Allan Fields headed the Private Sector at a time when the envied social partnership was framed provides bitter comfort to the hundreds of Barbadian LIME employees on the breadline. Further comfort would have thought to be forthcoming from Sir Hillary Beckles whose legacy counts his valiant battle with the Mutual, known as The Mutual Affair. The two Knights mentioned now make-up the C&W Board, an oxymoronic state if ever there is one.
LIME continues to send home Barbadians at a time when they have recorded unprecedented profits in 2008. The Barbados Workers Union (BWU) continues to be made a fool of with the LIME impasse being a long line of other unresolved disputes where workers have been marginalized with weak representation. The government appears to be helpless in the face of free market forces. The consumers continue to accept shoddy service from LIME even as they are being shafted…
Business as usual on the Paradise Isle.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.