Atherley blasts COVID-19 management

In a scathing indictment of the Government’s management of the COVID-19 crisis, Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley on Friday blamed an over-reliance on tourism above all else for leading to a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

So far, four times as many Barbadians have died from COVID-19 and its complications in the first seven weeks of the year than in all of 2020.

But beyond a critical assessment of the state of the pandemic and outlining what he considered to be several comments, Atherley did not offer any concrete proposals for wrestling the coronavirus pandemic to the ground, from protocols to policies.

Nonetheless, the Mia Mottley administration had failed comprehensively in several key areas of its management of the pandemic, said Bishop Atherley, whose Peoples’ Party for Democracy and Development (PdP) holds the lone opposition place in the 30-seat House of Assembly.

In a statement, he declared: “Government has lost perspective. This is negatively affecting its strategising on the matter while inducing an undesirable level of adhocism. Government’s over-emphasis on protecting the Barbados brand, as they put it a few weeks ago, while continuing to expose the people and the country itself to the more virulent and contagious variants of the virus coming through our airport out of UK and Europe. When it comes down to a matter of lives or livelihoods, life is always priority number one.”

Bishop Atherley was also critical of what he described as inconsistencies in the time taken to receive PCR test results, along with limited resources being available to treat the general population, leading to many Barbadians being uneasy and anxious about their situations.

He said: “Barbados with its current health demographic profile, inadequate resources, limited pool of health professionals with opinions constrained by bureaucracy and or ethics cannot afford the loss of confidence in government strategy by our health experts to the extent to which I am informed is the case now.

“COVID as a serious public threat has also exacerbated an already bad economic situation for us. In the absence of private-sector economic activity, there would have been increased reliance on Government capital spending, some private capital input, as well as social welfare assistance initiatives to help offset total economic calamity.

“Government’s BOSS [Barbados Optional Savings Scheme] initiative has failed to deliver. Its BEST (Barbados Employment and Sustainable Transformation) programme is being returned to the drawing board. Its capital spend restricted. Private capital enterprise stalled. Much of its promised support to economic sectors remain in the realm of promise.”

As cases and deaths due to COVID rise daily, Atherley said, some important questions remain unanswered on the full impact of COVID-19 on the island.

The PdP leader said: “We dread the escalating numbers of new infections, and we are very concerned about the well-being of our health care workers and apprehensive about our systems becoming overwhelmed. But the vital questions remain how did we get here? Did it have to be this way? And even more urgent where will we end up?”
(SB)