Some of my political allies may cringe, but I nevertheless invite all Barbados to read last weekend’s Barbados Labour Party newspaper column, captioned ‘BLP Column: Financial revelations’.
There is something most striking about the reasoning and logic of the BLP, under Mia Mottley. I do not agree with the manner in which Owen Arthur has set about putting the issue of BLP leadership ‘under the microscope’, but I understand the thinking.
See what the BLP, under Mottley, wrote in not one, but both newspapers, and broadcast on its radio programme, last weekend:
“…the Government potters about with ill-advised schemes like Constituency Councils and summer camps, seemingly oblivious to the danger that dawdling is having on a timely economic recovery. By the time they realise the error of their ways, much pain will have been endured by an unsuspecting public who they are trying to win over with ‘freenesses’. Free summer camps and free bus rides may yet be too dear a price for the country to bear.”
Can you believe that? Grantley Adams, Tom Adams and the founding fathers of the Barbados Labour Party must be turning in their graves. This is leadership that has lost its way and is out of control!
Here is a party in opposition seeking to regain the trust and confidence of the electorate, and the very schemes with which ordinary Barbadians can identify and have embraced, the BLP, under Mia Mottley, is saying should be scrapped, as they are too costly on the treasury.
I will not look back to the period 2000 to 2008 when in excess of $750 million in cost overruns were racked up by the former administration. I will not speak about the new prison that was quoted in one currency and ended up costing the same or more in another. I will not refer to the building in Warrens that ended up costing taxpayers nearly 10 times what it is valued and of course, we shall not mention, on this occasion, the dubious ABC Highway improvement project, for which the millions wasted are still being counted. None of these glaring examples of wastage and squander mania will I rely upon to make my point in this article.
I could dwell also on the insistence by Mottley that we should forge ahead with ill-conceived flyovers, each costing in excess of $70 million. Were this government to announce tomorrow that it would use the same firm handpicked by the BLP four years ago to build three flyovers for in excess of a quarter billion dollars, the measure, we are confident, would receive the full support of the BLP, under Mia Mottley. But, again, that is not the bone of contention today.
I go further to say that the current government has to date offered in excess of $200 million in direct concessions to big business in Barbados, as a means of mitigating the fall-out from the global economic downturn. It has given money to tourism, to farmers, to slot machine operators, to horse owners and riders, to road builders; generally to every known group of business person threatened by or who have fallen victim to the downturn of business, occasioned by the global economic depression.
This money, in cash and concessions, has been given and not a squeak has come from the opposition, because, for the most part, they can identify with the need and the cause of big business. Money put into the hands of big business is money well spent and deservedly so, according to the BLP, under Mia Mottley.
But this government says to a poor mother of three in the countryside ‘we know things are hard on you and we value your wanting to educate your children. Don’t worry about bus fares. We will pay that for you’.
That concession is valued less than $8 million annually, but it has incurred the wrath of the BLP, under Mia Mottley. It is like the proverbial bone, stuck in their craw. They simply cannot fathom the idea of “giving” to the poor. Give to the rich and all is well. Give to the poor and you are condemned. Robin Hood, according to them, had it all wrong!
In almost every statement released by the BLP, under Mia Mottley, the free bus-fare initiative is referenced in the most disparaging of terms. Now, we are told it’s a ‘freeness’, the country can il-afford.
The same goes for summer camps for school children. The children of affluent and well off parents go to Disney World, Paris and New York for summer holidays. Others go sailing on cruise ships or on pleasure crafts down the Grenadines. The 90 per cent majority children of working class parents watch television or roam the streets aimlessly for eight long weeks.
The Government of David Thompson said to parents “look, we know what a strain it is for you to have to go to work and leave your children unattended and in harm’s way for eight long weeks. We know many of you cannot afford private summer camps. We will take the load off you. We will create a national summer camp programme, in which we come up with programmes that the children would like and where we can attend to them and keep them engaged and out of trouble for much of the long vacation’.
That is what the government undertook and truth be told the programme does not cost $3 million. Indeed, whatever it cost, 90 per cent of the money is pumped directly into the coffers of small, ordinary folks who supply camp counseling or catering services. Yet, every time the BLP, under Mia Mottley, opens its mouth, it speaks in the most reproachful manner about the summer camps. Is it that government money is not to be spent on poor people?
Through the eyes of the Mia Mottley-led BLP, it is alright to pump money into big business and through procurement, where the State is paying nearly four times the value of the product, but to spend a fraction of such funds on poor people and the cause of poor people is the crime of the century.
The same principle applies to Constituency Councils. The BLP in government spent millions on dubious community projects, 60 per cent of which are today not identifiable or visible to the naked eye. There are houses that were paid for that cannot be found, road projects that were started and paid in full but never completed and toilets that were built for the value of a bungalow. Yet none of these was viewed as wastage or squander mania by a BLP government that included Mia Mottley.
But this government establishes Constituency Councils and give them a measly $100 000 to attempt the myriad number of projects that need attending to in communities, and the Barbados Labour Party, in opposition, has gone ballistic. Where is the logic? Where is the reasoning?
What is wrong with poor people handling money? One man was given hundreds of thousands to build a toilet and nothing is wrong with that. But an entire Committee, comprising pastors, teachers, lawyers, accountants, housewives and other honest, hard working people drawn from the society, cannot be trusted to spend $100 000 on the community in which they live. This logic is sickening. It smacks of the class prejudices with which some of us have had to contend all our lives.
One does not wish to get personal in situations such as these, but the truth must be spoken. It is hard for the current Leader of the Opposition to understand what free bus fares mean to working class Barbadian parents. The Current Leader of the Opposition cannot understand the benefit to parents, mental, financial and otherwise, of having children in a secure and constructive setting for the bulk of the summer holiday. The current Leader of the Opposition clearly does not understand what it means to an ordinary man or woman for the government to say ‘here is some money. I entrust you with the responsibility of determining how it is spent’. She simply does not understand. Indeed, she cannot understand! She is not from “the hood”.
In matters such as these, the David Thompson administration, with which I am proud to be associated, is inspired and motivated by the dictum that ‘only by understanding what people value, will we be able to serve them better’.
David Thompson understands that Barbadians value the free bus fare initiative. He understands that they value the Summer Camps. He understands that they value Constituency Councils. That is why he has committed his government to sustaining them, much to the dismay and disapproval of the Barbados Labour Party, under Mia Mottley.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.