Mr. Donville Inniss, the Minister of Health, delivered a remarkable address to the Old Harrisonian Society last weekend. In many ways it reflected Ms. Mia Mottley’s comments in the House of Assembly when she declared that we have a government that we can no longer afford. Both members of Parliament on opposite sides of the House recognize that the present structure of government is not serving the people of Barbados as well as it should. I agree!
In fact there is probably a broad consensus on this issue. The question is, what are we prepared to do about it?
Barbados is replete with studies and diagnostic analysis that highlight the threats to our economic development but we seem to be short on solutions. Those that we do have seem to be unpalatable and not politically expedient. Policy making has now reached the level of putting reelection ahead of national interest and the ship of state is a rudderless vessel aimlessly drifting in the turbulence of a dangerous world.
I do not advocate reckless and extreme measures or radical surgery, but we seem to have reached a point that maintaining the status quo has become an article of faith and the society is suffering from a form of mental sclerosis. Both the public and private sectors seem to be resistant to meaningful change and are risk averse to a fault. It was not always so.
Larger and more sophisticated countries than ours are now struggling to deal with the issue of entitlements that threaten to swamp their public finances. The actuarial realities of state and federal Cadillac pension programs are now coming home to roost in the United States and socialized medicine in Europe and the US only add to the looming insolvency. Owen Arthur recognized the problems with our National Insurance at an early stage and took a tough decision to raise the retirement age to 70 and increase contributions over time to ensure the viability of the system well into the middle of this century. At the same time there is a cautious approach to limiting the excesses of our medical care programs.
We now need to seriously address the structure of government and the technological
infrastructure to support a public service of the 21st Century to meet the needs of our society. It requires an investment in a knowledge based society where decision making is pushed down to the lowest possible level. To do this we have to cut out the duplication of effort and downright wastefulness of government spending and seriously address the losses of statutory corporations. Where there is no longer a need for a statutory corporation or a department of government is should be closed. Last week I asked if there was any need for us to operate two sugar factories to process the island’s sugar cane. The sole reason seems to be to create unproductive work for people to perform at the public’s expense. This is not a sustainable policy.
This week, I must ask, what is the rationale for maintaining the Ministry of Agriculture at its present manning level? Now that the Sugar Industry falls under the Ministry of Finance, surely their workload must be significantly diminished.
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