PM touts jobs amid pandemic crisis, hurricane season

Prime Minister Mia Mottley Wednesday boosted her job-creation agenda even as her administration grapples with the coronavirus pandemic in addition to preparing for what experts predict will be a busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Mottley, who called a press briefing at Ilaro Court, to address mounting concerns over last weekend’s spike in COVID-29 cases to 24, said both public and private sector capital projects are being ramped up to provide employment.

Government is also stepping up the digitization of public records, while significantly expanding training of Barbadians under the national training initiative, she told journalists.

Thousands of workers, mostly in the tourism industry, have been on the breadline since March, as visitor arrivals slumped owing to the pandemic.

She said: “We believe that those three things when combined with the 12-month Barbados welcome stamp, which is intended to be able to create more long term visitors because short stay visitors will always be a problem within the context of these testing protocols, that we believe that we can start to get back progress and to have more Barbadians going to work going forward.”

Mottley reiterated that Barbados is also experiencing a period of global instability and suggested that almost every country in the western hemisphere will see significant economic decline, in addition to elsewhere.

She added that in many instances, there have been economic declines that have not been seen since the Second World War, and in some instances, even before that period.

She said at this time it is important that Barbados keep its citizens healthy and alive between now and the next six to twelve months until an accessible vaccine hopefully becomes available.

The Prime Minister said: “The next big hurdle is who will be prioritized in the use of the vaccine. The second thing is that we also have to recognize that even without that, there were other global points of instability, and for us, the major one is climate.

“We are in the middle of a hurricane season that is expected to be one of the most active for a long time, and that you would note, that we reached in July.

“Now the last time that happened in 2005, I was told by the meteorologist that we not only finished the normal alphabet that we went into the Greek alphabet. And we really do expect that we are going to have to be very proactive with respect to preparing ourselves for any kind of weather system.

“And the Government, as you know, has been doing that over the course of the last few weeks, trying to make sure that as many communities and people can be protected.

“So all of that leads to additional jobs, in addition to the structured programme that I outlined to the country earlier, plus the support systems to be able to help as many of our enterprises stay alive.

“But at the end of the day we are not a first world country, but we will try our best to make sure that as many of our people as humanly possible, can keep their heads above water and resume to a different type of growth when we come back after the COVID vaccine is hopefully available to all.”