Lashley says rapid response social services unit has potential but may face hurdles

By Ryan Gilkes

The initiative to establish a rapid response unit to offer 24-hour housing assistance and support in emergencies and disasters could face an uphill battle created by “jealousy” and “bureaucratic resistance”, the country’s first minister of social transformation warned on Thursday.

Even as he issued the caution, Hamilton Lashley endorsed the Resilience and Reintegration Unit and highlighted its potential to provide relief to individuals in dire circumstances such as house fires and other calamities. 

He emphasised the importance of supporting marginalised and disenfranchised groups and the need for a safety net to cushion the impact of disasters.

“Any initiative that is established to help assist a person who finds themself under stringent circumstances, whether it be a house fire or any other calamity or malady, and that can bring that necessary relief to people, whether poor, marginalised, disenfranchised, should be welcome,” the veteran grassroots activist told Barbados TODAY.

“I believe that we need to help those groupings as best we can.  Furthermore, every effort must be made to put the necessary systems in place that will protect them with that safety net, to cushion any impact of any situation that they might fall into.”

Last week, during a post-Cabinet press conference, Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey said that the new unit, which should be in place by April 1, would be vital to the delivery of social services. Adding that over the last few years, Barbados has been in a climate crisis; facing disasters; and persons had been evicted from their households and some made homeless, he said the unit is meant to address those things.

Lashley, who moved from head of the Poverty Alleviation Bureau to Minister of Social Transformation under the Owen Arthur administration, said the challenge that he faced during his tenure – inherent bureaucratic structures that hindered swift service delivery to the marginalised – could affect this latest initiative.

“When I was the minister, people found ways to make things not happen. In this case, I always put this blame on some persons in the civil service. Somehow, there were those people who would like to play with the future of poor people. They seem to like playing with their lives and find ways to make things not happen” he said.

“I encountered instances where, when there were people who had been through house fires and would come to the ministry for assistance, you would have people saying, ‘they have to wait . . .  they aren’t the only one who had a house burn down’. Things like that don’t care-ish attitude that exists in the minds of some – not all…. These are people that should know better.”

Lashley said this attitude could hinder Minister Humphrey and his initiatives.

“He has a fight on his hands. He has a fight with the inherent bureaucratic structure because if he continues in the way that he has, it is also obviously going to attract some jealousy,” the former minister said. 

To overcome these obstacles, he advocated a strategy he employed during his term: establishing partnerships with civil society and the business community to expedite service delivery. 

“I got to a point where I got so frustrated with how things were operating in my ministry that I had to go outside of those prohibitive structures and establish a link with civil society and also the business sector to accelerate the whole response programme to get a faster delivery of services to the marginalised groupings.

“What [Minister Humphrey] might have to do is establish a working relationship with civil society and also the business society. If not, I am fearful that as well-intentioned as his project might be, he will have an implementation problem,” Lashley said. (RG)