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 Peter Webster
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish
“There’s none so blind as those who will not see” – Proverb
“How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer my friend is written on the wind, the answer is written on the wind” – Bob Dylan
The need to remind Barbadians that something must be done to improve the performance of our civil servants keeps cropping up as in the current controversy involving the Government’s “Industrial” Schools.
The Father of our Independence branded our civil servants, “The Army of Occupation” and over the years this was followed by a plethora of “failures” including:
1. Cost overruns on most capital projects;
2. A 70 per cent implementation deficit identified by all the International agencies;
3. Our potholed roads and poorly maintained Government buildings;
4. The Transport Board’s poor and costly maintenance of buses and poor bus service;
5. Poor maintenance of equipment across the Public Sector;
6. Long delays at Barbados Revenue Authority;
7. Long delays at the Barbados Licensing Authority;
8. Bad to non-existent pipeline maintenance, poor management of our water resources and poor water supplies from the Barbados Water Authority;
9. Import licences issued over and over again just when our local producers have flooded the market with local produce;
10. Long Planning delays with investors complaining that after weeks of consultation “we are none the wiser”;
11. Low international rating for doing business in Barbados;
12. Public sector officers telling investors that “the Public Sector’s job is to tell you what you cannot do not what you can do”;
13. BADMC’s repeated failures among other things to settle farmers on the Government’s land vested in them as in the “Land for landless” programme;
14. The recent COVID tests backlog;
15. The list goes on and on and on and on and these are just the “tip of the iceberg” of which you may remember many that affected you. The problems at the Government’s Industrial Schools – Dodds, Summerville and Barrows are nothing new – just the latest.
What about all the other children’s homes where too many of the children always seem to be hungry while some of the staff can barely waddle about? “One swallow does not a summer make” so how many “anecdotes” are needed to paint the picture?
Public Sector Reform has failed to achieve an improvement in performance and productivity across the Public Sector including the State-Owned Enterprises, because it has focused on systems and procedures rather than people. The best systems and procedures are no better than the people who operate them.
Yet these people are good people, but good people without a drive and/or a purpose and accountability.
No incentive, no accountability, no reward and no sanction and their public sector managers are not empowered by the centralised bureaucracy to “manage” anything.
No chain is stronger than its weakest link so we need to hold all accountable. We cannot get away with holding just a few accountable such as those for whom contracts are proposed – although that is a move in the right direction, if their contracts will have the necessary clauses that will permit them to be held accountable.
The poor performances of these “good” people have contributed to the downfall of every Government of Barbados since Independence and it is not the fault of the politicians. They are easy to blame but we can and do “fire” them. We hold them accountable! They are incentivised! Our public servants are not!
We need to start with their job descriptions which must focus on their outputs and deliverables in terms of specific quantities, quality and timing their non-activities.
My friends, if you think like Bob Dylan that “the answer is blowing in the wind” you deserve everything you get! Nothing will change unless you change it. There is no remote control to life, you have to get up and change it yourself!
Peter Webster is a retired Portfolio Manager of the Caribbean Development Bank and a former Senior Agricultural Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture.
