Cabinet working ‘day in and day out’

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley believes cutting the Cabinet any further would result in less output at a time when there is much to do.

Strongly defending the size of her Cabinet, Mottley said: “I have already cut the Cabinet and if we want to be able to deliver at the local level, at the national level, at the regional level, and to get the elbow room that we need at the international level to spend what we need and to get what we need, to suggest that I cut the Cabinet any further is to make an emotive plea that would result in nothing other than the diminution of output.”

She was at the time responding to a suggestion from a member of the audience attending Tuesday’s St Thomas Speaks town hall meeting at the Lester Vaughan Secondary School that she should trim her Cabinet.

The Prime Minister said she cannot be “penny wise, pound foolish”. She pointed to her adjustment in the size of the Cabinet following the 2022 General Election after calls for her to do so.

However, St Thomas resident Michael Alleyne who suggested to the Prime Minister that she should further reduce Cabinet and put the savings from such a move towards the budget of the Welfare Department, disagreed with Mottley’s position.

“I expect you not to [agree] because he who wears it, feels it, and he who walks the road knows it, and she who does will not only know it, but gine talk ‘bout it, the Prime Minister said in response to Alleyne’s stance.

“That’s why you have the opportunity to look from outside and comment. I have the reality that I am now sleeping less than six hours every night because I literally, not me alone, I have a Cabinet that is working day in and day out.

“And it’s not just the Cabinet, with all due respect, it is also the public servants. And you now have public servants doing, at the senior level, the job that two and three people would do in another country. Ask the AG [Attorney General], [about] the Chief Parliamentary Counsel. Today, I felt for them, they are going non stop trying to get all the orders before Parliament, the Ministry of Finance and the budget analysts. The same handful of people doing this, doing that and this and that because in a small country. . .”

Prime Minister Mottley said in the future, people may argue that “there is a size that states should not fall below because we have all of the obligations of large democracies while at the same time having nowhere near the people capacity or the monetary base to do it”.

“And until we start to speak truth to situations in this country, rather than being lulled into a populace type of approach, we are going to reap what we sow. That is what happened with the last government you know.

“The last government tell you, ‘oh we love you, we love you, and we keeping you employed’, and not a cent else ain’t getting paid. All of a sudden you are the third most indebted country in the world. How does that help you?,” she said to the audience.

Mottley added that if the country does not have the best and sufficient people in the political class and in other sectors of society carrying the weight and leading the country to world-class status, then Barbados would inevitably fall.

“And then you will complain that things rough, because you are not attracting the investment, you are not attracting the immigration, you are not attracting the people to do the things to build out the growth that we need.

“And you still want everything that we had 40, 50, 60 years ago, which we want to give you because for us, education is at the core of the upliftment of people in this country. And when I say I am not running again it is not that I don’t feel I got something in me, but I feel I have to talk this country through some very difficult decisions in the next three, four years.

And if I allow politics to get in there, rather than remaining focused on repositioning this country, Barbados will not rise,” Mottley said, adding that an all-country approach is needed for Barbados to continue on a growth trajectory. (AH)