The crippling traffic and societal disorder in Barbados is the outcome of a systematic failure: we grew up being told by the old folks, you cannot solve big complex problems, if you are unable to solve small ones. For over 50 years we refused to fix simple problems that have led to creating gridlock and in the process, eroded the social fabric of our tiny country – a characteristic that had positively defined Barbados and its people to onlookers.
The issue is not one complex problem, but a cluster of interconnected simple problems that have created an albatross on the back of our nation. There is the failure of poor government regulation and policy by government complemented with poor execution by public servants. Under successive governments we have demonstrated an uncanny inability and lack of will to solve small problems.
The poor policy implementation at the transportation authority has directly caused the process of doing business to be slow and frustrating. This has led to citizens being frustrated and now enables white collar corruption – paying bribes for licensing, contracting poorly paid policemen to look the other way, a moribund court system that is groaning under its caseload weight. This will be the legacy of retiring and longest serving Attorney General of Barbados Dale Marshall. The visible result, chaos!
This failure of basic governance is demonstrated daily in the PSV sector, where over 50 years of neglect have allowed chaos to flourish and mushroom. We have deprioritised enforcement which has allowed a subculture to develop and be ensconced. A subculture of lawlessness which is characterised by aggressive driving, loud music, disregard for traffic laws, we observe the lawbreaking and indiscretions daily on our roads. It has become normalised.
The most tragic consequence is that the daily display of lawlessness has negatively impacted our children and wider society. Our children watch adults break the rules which result in a violation of civic trust. As the old people say – who gine tell the other come back?
To potentially make matters worse, Prime Minister Mottley has hinted at flyovers as a bid ticket solution. Clearly flyovers address the symptom i.e. the volume of traffic, while ignoring the systemic problem. A multimillion dollar flyover project will allow a few to make money, but, will fail to solve the complex traffic crisis because problems of poor policy, administrative inefficiency, and systemic corruption will remain. Here is the irony – we allowed uncontrolled numbers of vehicles to flow into Barbados and mashup the roads, created congestion and add to the lawlessness and believe that pothole patching, farming out huge electric buses to modest transport board workers, adding flyovers to name three are the solutions.
We have to return to basics: instituting strong, transparent policy; enforcing simple laws consistently; and automating as many processes as possible to eliminate the opportunity for corruption and poor decision making. We have to return to good governance to win back our reputation and extricate from the wild Wild West culture we have become addicted.
God bless BIM on Independence!
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