#BTColumn – Let sound thinking prevail

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados TODAY Inc.

by Angus Jones

As Barbados seeks to emerge from the death grip of COVID-19 and as thousands of citizens now laid-off in the tourism sector try to make their way off the breadline, we need to be wary of troublemakers who may derail that process by their actions.

For weeks I see a certain gentleman from another Caribbean country, launch a series of – to tell you the truth – whimsical legal assaults on two of our corporate citizens who have at least tried to resurrect employment for people, that is JADA and Sandals, and at a time when people are suffering from both health and economic deprivation.

This goodly gentleman seems to have some personal axe to grind with Sandals. First it was some nonsense about walking his dogs on the beach and when he could not get at them with that, he tried going after local contractors JADA working on the Sandals expansion and very nearly shut down one of the few projects we had going on island at the time, and that was employing labourers.

I don’t know why JADA gave in to the man, but now he has resumed the old, nonsensical issue with Sandals and his dogs saying he wants to sue the company.

I note that this latest story left out to mention in the original story of his dogs apparently jumping up on people who were there and almost disrupting a table that guests were eating on. As far as I understand these are big animals.

It’s unfortunate that we have to take up time on this issue, when we should be focused on fighting the virus, getting people back out to work, and reviving the economy. The reason this is important is that the gentleman’s actions come on the eve of the hotel reopening, and seems a deliberate attempt to create disruption at a time when hundreds of people will finally get a chance to go back out to work and start earning.

Come on people, let’s not encourage these types of attention-seekers and serial protestors.

This is the same gentleman who was protesting outside a Caribbean consulate and then the US embassy last year– at a time when persons should not have been gathering because of COVID. This is the same gentleman who sued a big supermarket chain in the UK over a chocolate bar.

Litigious much?

Come on folks, let’s get serious.