NEW MOVE

PAROLE, ANKLE MONITORS TO BE INTRODUCED SOON

By Jenique Belgrave

A parole and electronic monitoring system should be in effect in Barbados before the end of the financial year.
Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams said on Wednesday during his contribution to the Budget debate in the House of Assembly, that the Government was pressing ahead with plans to make that a reality.
“It is our intention, Sir, that before the end of this financial year that we will have in place a parole system and we will have in place the electronic monitoring system. So that . . . if you should get bail and we’re not certain that you will stay where you are supposed to stay, then you will be one of those people that we clap an ankle bracelet on and your family feeds you because you are at home,” he said.
Noting that each prisoner is a financial cost carried by taxpayers, Abrahams said initiatives like electronic monitoring would help the Government to save money.
Meanwhile, Abrahams said he was “tired” of hearing criticisms that the Government was not working for the average citizen.
To counter that argument, he pointed to various projects implemented by the Mia Mottley-led administration which first came to power in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022, including the introduction of electric buses, the purchase of additional garbage trucks, the refurbishment of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department, the creation of the Harrison Point Isolation Facility, and myriad road repairs.
Dismissing criticism of the Budget presentation levelled by the Democratic Labour Party president Dr Ronnie Yearwood who complained about the absence of tax cuts, Abrahams suggested that the current level of taxation is necessary to fund essential services and fix infrastructural problems.
“All of what we’re doing now has to be paid for. The roads cost money; the mains programme costs money; to keep Barbados clean costs money; to educate our children from cradle to grave costs money; to fix the hospital costs money; to build the headquarters for the fire and ambulance service costs money,” he contended.
“To be able to give our people the $1 500 [one-off payment for public servants] costs money; to be able to increase the benefits to the pensioners costs money; the buses cost money; the garbage trucks cost money. It was easy for them to say they didn’t spend as much as we did because you didn’t have it, because nobody wanted to lend you any money…. We have done a ‘bariffle’ of things,” Abrahams insisted.
(jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb)