SAVING BARBADOS FROM RECESSION (PART 4)

Our "Rescue Plan" to save Barbados from recession began with proposals for absolutely essential measures to re-establish the soundness of the finances of our Government and to restore the purchasing power of the Barbadian people.

But even while this foundation of financial reforms is being put in place, our Government must bestir itself and come to the assistance of citizens who are facing unemployment or are otherwise in poverty and distress!

To begin with, our Government must commit itself to preserving and maintaining all of our nation’s existing welfare services and programmes! And of course, this is no mere academic matter. Our new Minister of Finance will shortly be delivering his first Budget presentation, and we are therefore publicly calling on him not to touch Government’s existing welfare programmes! If cuts are to be made to the national budget, let them be made elsewhere!

We Barbadians must insist on Barbados being a ‘civilized’ society. And in a civilized society, when economic conditions become difficult, the poor and destitute are not abandoned! In fact, it is precisely in such difficult times that Government must show its true worth as the principal defender of the ‘general welfare’ of the people.

The services and programmes that we consider to be absolutely sacrosanct are as follows - the Welfare Department, National Assistance Board, National Disabilities Unit, Barbados Council for the Disabled, the Child Care Board, Poverty Alleviation Bureau, National Drug Service, the Geriatric and District Hospitals, National HIV/AIDS Commission, Children’s Development Centre and the School Meals Department. All together, these agencies and programmes comprise approximately $180 million out of Government’s total estimated expenditure of $3.6 Billion for fiscal year 2009 - 10, an extremely modest proportion indeed.

But preserving the funding of these essential welfare services is not all that is demanded of Mr Sinckler and the current Democratic Labour Party administration. They must also go on to establish a public works programme that will come to the rescue of the rising number of unemployed Barbadians!

The specific public works programme that we have in mind is an environmental programme directed towards dealing with such pressing environmental issues as flooding and soil and beach erosion. We envisage a number of labour intensive projects devoted to creating new drainage infrastructure, re-establishing critical suck wells and protective vegetation cover, as well as a variety of beach and reef protection measures. And needless-to-say the persons to be employed in this public works programme would be drawn primarily from the ranks of the currently unemployed.

But where, you may ask, is the funding to come from? Well, we believe that the Barbados Government can access international grant funding for such an environmental protection project under the broad international "global warming and climate change agenda".

Left to us, we would bring together the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Environment & Drainage and put them to work on accessing international funding for Barbados from such entities as the ‘Global Environmental Fund’ established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Control.

Of course, the argument to be made is that as a low lying small island Caribbean state vulnerable to the effects of global warming and climate change, Barbados needs to proactively strengthen its environmental defences.

But, of course, not only will we be addressing a genuine environmental problem, we will also be combating unemployment and alleviating human distress, as part of a comprehensive strategy to save Barbados from recession.