‘Rewards for test delays protects our reputation’

Prime Minister Mia Mottley tonight stoutly defended the Government’s decision to pay the costs of returning nationals and tourists who have been waiting in quarantine hotels for more than 72 hours for their COVID-19 test results.

Mottley disclosed that the Government will have to spend some $1 million dollars to repair the damage to its reputation abroad due to a recent explosion in COVID-19 cases resulting in serious delays in test results to visitors and locals.

Responding to harsh criticism by some locals against compensating those in quarantine particularly visitors who had run out of funds due to the unexpected delay in receiving their test results, Prime Minister Mottley said this attitude was unfair and regrettable.

In seeking to strengthen the Government’s case, she drew reference to an “intrinsic” Barbadian demand for “satisfaction” if they had not received the quality good or service for which they had paid.

“Now if satisfaction is good enough for each and every one of us, how do we believe that the one thing that predominantly yes, visitors from overseas, but Bajans returning home…Caribbean people coming to see people…how do we believe that we know that we have done something that falls short and that we should just turn our faces away and do not offer some form of satisfaction?” the Prime Minister asked.

Pressing home her point, Mottley said while she did not believe the majority of Barbadians were critical of the payment decision, it is regretted that some would want the Government to turn its back on these people, who in many cases would not have budgeted or had the money to pay the hotels.

“The thought of hoteliers having to have a crisis of conscience as to whether they go to the police or whether they write off or accept the fact that they would not get paid for a night or those nights is something that would not work well, especially if you have to turn around and pay the workers and to pay everyone else,” the Government leader reasoned.

Mottley suggested that the country will have to have a discussion about how citizens treat visitors especially considering that the hallmark of Barbadians on the international scene is their hospitality and warmth.

The Prime Minister also addressed the criticism against the Government’s plan to buy return airline tickets for those visitors who were forced to spend their entire stay in quarantine and through no fault of theirs, had to leave without being able to enjoy the country.

“And as Minister of Finance when we have done the numbers, the numbers are within our capacity because, what I would have to spend to repair our brand – which by the way is still being damaged and regrettably, it is being fuelled by some of our own from within.

“I want to be able to say to you that for us to buy tickets for 400 persons to return to Barbados, is not because we feel like being idle, but if a person has come here and they are staying in a 10 x 12 room or a 10 x 14 room, they have not been able to leave that room for eight days, nine days, ten days, but were expecting to leave it within two days to three days, the first thing we have is the inability of the person to spend what they thought they were going to be able to enjoy,” added the Prime Minister.

Mottley said the other issue resulting from such a situation is that the visitor never got to enjoy the country.

She explained that if the Government was therefore going to negotiate bulk rates for a large number of people it is not going to be the same thing that an individual would pay to a tour operator or to an airline.

“But apart from anything else, if we were going to have to resolve this issue, ask yourself what it would cost the Government of Barbados to buy electronic advertising on CNN, BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. Ask yourself what it would cost us to buy half-page or whole page ads from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to the London Times, Toronto Sun. Ask yourself, why is it the Toronto Sun ran a story this week that the Government of Barbados turned a positive into a negative or a negative into a positive however which way you want to view it,” the Government leader declared.

According to her Government recognizes it may not always be able to control when something bad happens either from a natural disaster or from our own actions.

“But what we can always control my friends, is how we treat people and we simply do not feel that a person should have to sue us, pay a lawyer in order to be able to do the right thing. But in any event, we also feel that it hurts our brand,” Mottley contended.

The Prime Minister argued that the Barbados brand was important because tourism and its linkages touch almost every family.

She noted that last year when no tourists were coming, there was a reduction in the purchase of pork and chicken to the extent that there was a glut on the local market.

Mottley explained that farmers’ produce had to be frozen resulting in business being stopped because there was nobody to buy.

“Barbados on average hosts twice our population over the course of a year. It means that that 600,000 or 700,000 people who are long-stay people and then another 800,000 that would normally be cruise ship day visitors have to eat…have to travel, have to drink, have to do all of those things. And in the production of that, it means that it is not just the jobs that you see in hotels and villas, but it is the jobs at all the distributors’ stores in town,” she added.

She cautioned residents that when they discuss issues related to visitors, they must understand the consequences of what was being said and done.

“In the circumstances, my friends, therefore, to spend on or about a million dollars to be able to deal with Barbados’ brand and to deal with the damage that came as a result of what I would call in one-in-hundred event, because we have never had that kind of explosion where near 27,000 tests over an eight, ten-day period have been foisted on us because of literally what would have transpired with the start of this event and with the prison,” declared the Prime Minister. (emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)