Prime Minister Thompson said something in passing over the weekend that I think should not be allowed to pass. It is that for a country that did so well, financially speaking, in the late 1990s and first seven years of the 21st century, Barbados should not have so huge a backlog of persons relying on State regulated social services.
24, 000 persons on the waiting list of the National Housing Corporation is scandalous, especially when one considers the hundreds of millions of dollars there were spent on dubious public sector projects during the so called ‘glory years’. Think about it! Do you realize the number of homes that could have been built and the number of affordably priced house lots that could have been carved out from the near $300 million that was pumped, or some may say dumped, into the Greenland Landfill?
Why should the list of elderly folks applying for help from the National Assistance Board be exceeding the 10, 000 mark, when during the period of their wait, this country had in excess of $300 million to spend on a bunch of run down hotels that to this day has provided absolutely no return on investment? We couldn’t afford to take care of our elderly, but we could have found money to enrich a couple of party affiliates.
Why should old persons be waiting for 15 years for help in installing an indoor toilet or repairing a roof over their heads, when we were at the same time in a financial position to give an open, signed cheque to the developers of the new Kensington Oval? Hundreds of millions of dollars was pumped into that facility at a time when the number of persons seeking Home Care Assistance was climbing. It was also at a time when victims of spousal abuse and children of sexual and other physical abuse had no safe haven.
Something was fundamentally wrong with the direction this country was headed when, for the almighty dollar, we were prepared to compromise and jeopardize our water table by recklessly tinkering with water restriction zones. Tonight a person went to sleep living in a zone two water restriction area and by tomorrow morning, they were living in zone three, because someone with deep pockets wanted to build a monstrosity next to them.
Also, that the advice of town planners could have been overruled in favor of setting down unsightly developments along our west coast is an eternal shame to those responsible. How could we have been so callous with the legacy we bequeath to future generations? Don’t tell anyone, but I personally find our current west coast very unappealing to the eye.
Indeed, I hardly drive visiting friends along that route. Those responsible for blocking views to the ocean and for imposing some of those towering structures shall remain damned and condemned, in my consideration, for a very long time.
But getting back to this issue of a false sense of development and prosperity, did we really need a $700 million prison? We are scrambling now to find the money to refurbish or build a national hospital, but we didn’t bash an eyelid when money was plentiful, in commissioning a near one billion dollar jail. Can you imagine the type of hospital facility that we could have had for half that money?
And yet today we are quarrelling about eight million dollars being spent on free bus rides for school children and two million dollars going to holiday camps for the same children. Is anyone aware of the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent on vehicles and equipment for agencies such as the Transport Board, Water Authority, Sanitation Service, Public Works Department and the said Greenland Landfill? Check and see what neighboring islands paid for this said equipment and vehicles from the same suppliers during that period.
This government can today buy fire trucks for 60 per cent of what was paid for similar vehicles from the same suppliers; meeting the same specifications, 10 years ago. The price that Barbados is paying today is the same price that is being quoted sister Caribbean countries. The question is why were we paying 40 per cent more than other countries for these said vehicles not too long ago?
People in Barbados who are hurting today must understand why they are hurting. If you have applied to the National Housing Corporation for a house and you cannot get one, in spite of the hundreds being built, it is because there is this huge backlog that was not attended to in times of plenty.
If your grandparents cannot get prompt assistance from the Urban or Rural Development Commissions, it is because there are thousands of persons before them who have been waiting for years for relief, but who were overlooked because of the number of phantom houses that were built in that dispensation.
The Prime Minister is right! This is not fair and it is not just…but, it is real.
Scores of road contracts were awarded companies that existed only in name and they were some individuals who received contracts to build roads and repair bridges that had not the slightest concept of how such should have been done. The result today is a plethora of unfinished projects in rural Barbados, for which monies have been paid in full but which will now have to be completed by this administration.
Some persons do not like us to talk about these things, but we have to, especially when a poor family walks into the office of a department of government and you essentially have to turn them away empty handed because you simply do not have the resources to attend to their needs.
The monies that this country now has to look for to settle the Al Barrack building controversy, the hundreds of millions that will be required to settle the 3S highway fiasco, the $700 million that has to be secured over time to pay for a prison and the $750 million in cost overruns that could have been avoided, all leave a consequence of pain and unnecessary suffering for ordinary Barbadians who had a right to sit and sup at the table of opportunity.
Persons don’t wish us to talk about these things because they would rather we forget them and look to the future. But tell that to the long list of persons standing in line at the doors of several social agencies waiting for a little relief. Tell that to the battered wife or the physically abused child who has no safe haven. Tell that to the old lady who fell last night while walking across the yard to use the pit toilet.
Those who are responsible for overlooking the plight and the needs of these categories of persons, in times of plenty, stand condemned and must not be forgiven or easily forgotten.
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