Happy Independence Barbados. The sacrifices of past generations have brought us to the place where we should be able to succeed in Barbados. One year from now you should be able to look back at this 53rd year of our independence and honestly say that it was your best year ever – despite the severe austerity.
For you to make such a declaration, you must decide now to be and do your best. You must determine that you will be the best son or daughter, sibling, parent, spouse, employer, employee, and friend that you can be.
There will always be challenges in each of these spheres of your existence. That is part of being human and living in a community. You will always make mistakes and so will others, even when everyone is doing their best.
There are things that you can change for the better and things that you cannot, and must simply accept. Therefore, your first step in making this your best year ever is to determine that you will do your best regardless of what mistakes others may make.
In Barbados, our Government has mistakenly led us on an unnecessary path of severe austerity, to our harm. Solutions Barbados published elegant solutions that were independently assessed to achieve over $1B surplus during our first year, without laying off any public workers, reducing their salaries or seeking external funding. We then spent 3 years sharing it with whomever would listen.
Regrettably, both established political parties chose not to listen. So we must all accept their severe austerity of: mass layoffs, increases in the cost of living, and inefficient delivery of poor quality public services. This is inevitable because of the mistaken belief in the heresy that our elected politicians are gods, who can simply speak things into being.
God speaks things into being. We humans cannot do that by ourselves. When we speak a command, we must have a management system for implementing what we have announced, otherwise we look foolish.
Without a proper management system, we will simply declare that garbage collection will improve, but it will not. We will declare that the bus service will improve, but it will not. We will declare that health and educational services will improve, but they will not. We will declare that laid-off persons will be sent home with money, but they will not.
People may try to implement the announced edicts as best as they can, but without a proper management method to guide them, the public must endure the foreseen and inevitable harmful consequences.
All external assessors who analyse Barbados’ economy have concluded that our main problems is the poor management of public services. We have known this for over 20 years, yet both political administrations made the grave error of rejecting the international quality management standard, which has significantly improved the public services of other countries. Instead, both administrations adopted, and we must all tolerate, a very low standard.
For this to be our best year ever, we must accept their gross errors, and do our best in response. The sooner we accept that our success does not depend on the benefits or mistakes of anyone, the faster we will get on the path to success.
For those who have been, or are soon to be laid off, here is my best advice. Place your uncertain hand in the trustworthy hand of our Creator, and perform every responsibility you are given with excellence, whether it is recognised by others or not.
Grenville Phillips II is the President of Solutions Barbados. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com
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