Poverty to blame – Lane

The man charged with advising Prime Minister Mia Mottley on poverty alleviation in Barbados believes that economic hardships and a degree of homelessness are responsible for families being major spreaders of COVID-19.

Special advisor Corey Lane said in many instances a person’s dire financial circumstances led them to the homes of other relatives or friends in search of assistance.

His comments have come following recent concerns expressed by Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George that families were increasingly responsible for several clusters of COVID-19 on the island.

Dr George said the respiratory virus was being spread from one household to another due to increased interaction.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Lane explained that poverty along with the construct of families in Barbados were major factors in the COVID-19 battle.

“I would say that poverty is part of it and by extension our socialization and our family makeup. They are not normal types [of families] that I grew up seeing, which was usually a mother, father and uncle and child. There are some sub-families within a home and there are some family friends who live like family within a home…

“When we think homelessness a lot of the time we think of persons living on the road but if you look at true and true homelessness, [it’s] people without homes, because a lot of the unstable families that we have in Barbados because of social status, because of selfishness, because of family relations breakdown, a number of people have to live by family, friends, old schoolmates, extended family, family-in-law and all of that causes interaction,” Lane said.

“So I won’t just say family in the sense of blood relations but family in the sense of people who coexist together within a household and within a community.”

He pointed out that in many of those situations, relationships often soured after a short period, leading to the affected persons seeking shelter elsewhere.

“One of the things I picked up in the Adopt-a-Family programme, where people put down an address and by the following month or two months later the address is different and when you make an enquiry it all points to the different factors that I spoke of,” Lane said.

Additionally, he said the spread of COVID-19 was also linked to the behaviour of some persons in certain communities.

“Now some communities and I’m not talking about geographical communities, but some communities are obviously more disciplined than others. I move around Barbados from time-to-time and I see some communities of people are very stable, steady, not moving around and some are still outside interacting…so I don’t think it’s just down to the nuclear or extended family but actual communities,” Lane noted.

He explained that Government had tried to neutralize movement by way of its care packages and Adopt-a-Family programmes to provide for vulnerable families.

“Government has employed a number of mechanisms through its emergency and social protection programmes to ensure that families can meet their basic needs and hence reduce the need to be doing a lot of moving around,” Lane maintained.

(randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)