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By Grenville Phillips II
The Barbados Statistical Service’s Retail Price Index of February 2023 has reported that Barbadian households are spending a larger amount of their income on education. Normally this would be good news, but if the education obtained was at tertiary level, it is not good news for modern Barbados.
People who complete tertiary level education may develop independent thoughts. Independent thinkers tend to think for themselves, rather than blindly accept what others tell them. Most Barbadians who complete their tertiary level education tend to leave Barbados.
An embarassing statistic
The World Bank’s study on emigration captured in Measuring the International Mobility of Skilled Workers (1990-2000) shows that Barbados is one of the few countries on Earth where most of its tertiary-educated population left. The consistent figure was over 60 per cent. In 2000, Barbados had the 13th highest brain-drain rate (emigration of skilled workers) among 191 nations on earth at 61.4 per cent. A decade earlier in 1990, it was 63.5 per cent.
To put that shockingly high number in context, only 12 other countries had a higher brain drain than Barbados in 2000 according to the publication. Among the average brain drain rates were: Central America (16.1 per cent), South America (5.7 per cent), Central Africa (13.3 per cent), West Africa (26.7 per cent) and Asia and Oceania (less than 10 per cent), all significantly less than in Barbados.
To further understand this number, war-torn countries and those suffering with famine had less brain drain rates than Barbados in 2000. To make matters worse, by 2011 we had the fourth highest brain drain rate in the world at 66.2 per cent according to the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Factbook 2016. Only Trinidad and Tobago (68.2 per cent), Haiti (75.1 per cent) and Guyana (93 per cent) had a higher rate.
Why would they flee
A brain drain rate of over 60 per cent cannot be in Barbados’ best interest. Why do so many of our highly-educated, independent thinkers want to leave Barbados? They can either be attracted to something in another country, or repulsed by something in Barbados, or both.
The same lure of higher wages, better employment opportunities and being with family also attract people in other regions. Yet, their brain drain rates are a small fraction of Barbados’. Therefore, there seems to be something in Barbados that independent thinkers find highly offensive. What can it be? Let us start by analysing what happens after a general election.
First, the new political administration justifies purging the public service of thousands of Barbadian workers hired by the previous administration by claiming that they need to cut spending and they are adhering to a ‘last-in, first-out (LIFO) policy. The new administration then hires thousands of new public workers, despite the need to cut spending, thus sustaining this cycle of LIFO purges.
After the new public workers excitedly obtain car loans and home mortgages, they are informed that the party in opposition will send them home if they are re-elected. Therefore, to protect their families, they are forced to become blind supporters and fierce defenders of the party that hired them. Treating families like pawns in this political game is highly offensive.
Secondly, the ruling party normally awards contracts to persons and businesses with no competitive tendering. This method of procurement may automatically disqualify the most competent Barbadians and almost always ensures that the least technically competent companies get the opportunity to do exceptionally poor work at inflated costs which must then be redone.
The public is forced to pay for both the original and the repair work with increased taxes. These corrupting no-bid contracts are offensive. They reinforce the idea that Barbados is a place designed to reward the worst companies and disqualify the best from participating in the national economy. The obvious solution is to abolish those contracts – but that would offend political donors.
Options for Independent thinkers
Tertiary level educated Barbadians seem to follow four paths: support the political party in government and eat, support another political party – and eat less, stay in Barbados and trust God or leave Barbados and avoid political victimisation. More than 60 per cent have chosen to leave.
The results of such a massive brain drain means that there are fewer qualified Barbadians left to do technical tasks. This was confirmed in a Caribbean Economics Quarterly article Reflections on Innovation and Productivity 2023 which was based on a survey conducted in 2020 which found that the main obstacle affecting business operations in Barbados was the lack of an adequately educated workforce.
The most severe consequence of this brain drain of independent thinkers is extreme partisanship among most who remain. By 2015, the partisan contagion had infected: professional and business organisations, the news media, secondary schools’ management and tragically – churches. Today, eight years later, the contagion has spread wider and rooted deeper – to the detriment of our children who mostly know partisan illusions of success.
We are facilitating people from other countries to pleasantly live, work and prosper in Barbados. At the same time, we are making it extremely difficult for most educated Barbadians to succeed in Barbados – so most have escaped. To whom are we leaving these “fields and hills”?
Grenville Phillips II is a Doctor of Engineering and a Chartered Structural Engineer. He can be reached at [email protected]
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