#BTEditorial – More people equal more basic infrastructure

For many years, Barbados’ population has remained somewhat stable, hovering between some 250,000 and 300,000, with the 2010 Barbados Population and Housing Census recording 277,821 people resident on the island. It is also a known fact that Barbados has a high number of senior citizens and is second only to Japan in the number of centenarians.

Given that it has been a decade since the last census, naturally the overall population will have grown, but some experts say, ‘it is not big enough.’ In fact, some years ago, the then Minister of Education, Ronald Jones, advised Barbadians to “have more babies”. And more recently, former Home Affairs Minister Edmund Hinkson and Prime Minister Mia Mottley have put forward the option of managed migration, that is, allowing young people from other countries to come into Barbados to live and work.

Last year, during a courtesy call with Guyana’s Consul General to Barbados, Cita Pilgrim, Hinkson said that Barbados’ population of approximately 280,000 could not fully support the standard of living the country was aiming to achieve and there was a need for people in their 20s and 30s to migrate into the island to contribute.

In a more recent podcast with Irish podcast host, Pat Kenny, Prime Minister Mottley broke down the numbers as she discussed the issue further. “We are actually in the process of settling a new Immigration Bill in the country. I had established a National Population Commission when we came into office two years ago. As a result of the work of that commission, we discovered that we have not really replaced our population since 1980, in terms of fertility and growth.

“To that extent, we are probably 80,000 less than we should be. It means that we are going to have a fairly liberal approach to immigration, while at the same time having a very strong framework for managing migration to the island. Obviously, persons who are Barbadian descendants have a particular natural right. But then we start to look at skills, we start to look at where the population gap can be filled in a way that adds value to our development trajectory,” she explained.

Economist Jeremy Stephen has also spoken to this matter, citing the example of Singapore, a country not much larger than Barbados but one which has made a tremendous contribution to the world stage over the years due to the economic policies introduced by its first Prime Minister, the late Lee Kuan Yew.

Stephen stated: “Understand that where Singapore was in terms of population in the 1960s was around two million, while Barbados was around 250 000 and we are not producing children in a big way. Most of Singapore’s population then came from bringing people in – managed migration is what made Singapore catapult because they recognised that they could get a heavy low-skilled resource that could be trained.”

“So, in terms of our resources, we have to acknowledge that we are where they were in 1961. We have a high level of unemployment that is not being guided towards returnable industries. Also, we believe in the Caribbean that industry must be kept until we die. I grew up hearing tourism is our business, after king sugar was dying out, we are still hearing this about tourism when it has been proven more and more that the returns on that are out of our reach for the time being … but Singapore changes its focal reach every ten years or so. We have not done this since 1982!”

Another example of managed migration would be the Windrush situation in the United Kingdom just after the Second World War. People from the British colonies were recruited to work in nursing and public transport, among other sectors, to replace some of the British nationals who would have lost their lives during the war.

So there is a compelling case for managed migration from an economic perspective. But there are still many ‘grey areas’ that require further thought. Now no one is suggesting that we start welcoming thousands of people into the island to live and work all at once, and even if people follow Jones’ advice and start having more babies, it will be at least another 18 to 21 years before those children reach working age.

However, what exactly are the country’s long-term economic goals that are impossible for us to reach with the current average population numbers? Are we planning to introduce new fields of endeavour that will require special skills the current indigenous population does not have, or may not be interested in? How soon are these ventures going to start, and how many people will we need in the first instance? Over how many years do we want to see our population grow by the estimated 80,000, and what is the age range we are looking at?

Beyond that, every day we hear complaints from our current populace about housing, public transportation, health care facilities, and the agricultural sector is always urging us to grow more food locally and reach a position of, as leading agriculturalist Lennox Chandler said many years ago, food sovereignty. We also have serious issues with water supply, sewage treatment and other waste disposal, and as a two-day blackout last November suggested, our electricity supply could use some work too, even if we go the renewable energy route.

We would surmise that the term “managed migration” refers to a certain amount of people over a certain period of time, for example, 10,000 people over ten years. So if we use this as our starting point, that means we will have to shore up all of the above areas to accommodate those numbers and then some. We should look seriously at housing solutions for all income levels, keeping a significant portion of land in agriculture, getting that remedial work done and some new elements added to our water distribution network, and we should also consider new hospitals, clinics and prison facilities.

Population growth is a serious matter and instead of merely discussing potential numbers from an abstract perspective, we need to see whether we can realistically accommodate these additional people given the current demands on all aspects of the country’s infrastructure. And we must see to it that we have the financial and other resources to ensure that these extra people can continue to maintain a relatively high standard of living.