Barbadians fear the worst as a family of five disappear into an underground cave, following the collapse of their apartment building today in Brittons Hill, St. Michael.
Recently the press has been abuzz with news of squatters being ordered by the Prime Minister, through the Town and Country Planning Department, to leave the lands on which they currently occupy and prepare to have their homes demolished. The two most recent incidents are those in Blenheim Town, St. Michael and Rock Hall, St. Phillip.. The major issue with squatters is that they not only contravene the law by occupying land which is not theirs, but often times they sit on land which is in a protected (Zone 1) water catchment area, which poses a considerable risk to the island’s water supply. In addition to this, the Rock Hall squatters pose a more dire problem due to their proximity to the Grantley Adams Airport, since it is alleged that the zinc roofing used on their homes interferes with the radar system used by air traffic control and therefore puts Barbados’ air travel in jeopardy. The only option these squatters now have, in the words of the Prime Minister, is to “move!”
While I agree wholeheartedly that the squatters should be removed, I am not surprised that there have been cries in the press by some of the squatters themselves and members of the opposition bench that Government should involve itself in finding alternate accommodation squatters before demolishing their homes, or even that Government should purchase the lands on which the squatters live to resell at a cheaper price. Neither of these calls reflect wisdom or initiative. While I am acutely aware of the social and economic factors that would lead individuals to squat illegally, to outfit squatters with new homes at state expense and to purchase squatter land in compromised water zones would be tantamount to rewarding theft and wrongdoing. I do not make this statement heartlessly or callously, but it sets a dangerous precedent if we say to other poor Barbadians - and indeed, Barbadians in general - that stealing out of necessity can be excused, condoned and rewarded. It is also a slap in the face to those who struggled to acquire housing and land legally to see those who went about the process illegally being outfitted with free housing and land.
The Bajan Dream Project model started out as a charity for the poorest of the poor, mainly those who were advanced in age or disabled with little to no income or prospects for work. This demographic was mainly occupied by elderly men and women in the rural and urban areas who lived in dilapidated or inadequate housing, and our planned intervention focused mainly on home repairs and refurbishment to improve the living quality of those persons who genuinely could not do so for themselves. Yet, the majority of Barbadians who are poor do not fit this demographic — the poor in Barbados are the young adult to middle-aged unemployed or underemployed poor who squat, live in insecure accommodation or have barely enough finances to afford even basic amenities or services. This group, according to the 1997 poverty survey, numbered 35,000 Barbadians - a figure which may have increased considerably in 2007.
A charity simply cannot treat to this demographic, and this underscores the main argument against the squatter sympathizers: charity, whether by the Government or some other institution, will not make life any better for squatters or remove them from poverty. Charity only gives a temporary fix, a transient comfort, but does nothing for improving self-governance or livelihoods.
It was precisely for this reason that the Bajan Dream model was revised. Under the new model the project would seek to acquire lands through donor funding and private sector engagement, and place squatters and other indigent Barbadians into a poverty alleviation programme which involves workforce skills and employability training. Contingent on their completion of the poverty alleviation programme, the Project will seek to provide them with low income housing on acquired land, at a favourable rate commensurate with their increased earning capacity. This of course is just a precis of the project model, but it underscores the need for a multi-pronged intervention to get these squatter dwellers into permanent shelter and alleviate the circumstances which caused them to squat in the first instance.
Charity, if needed, should be reserved for Marcellinus Noel, for whom I have much empathy, and who the Bajan Dream Project would have assisted freely if it was in such a position to do so at this time. It takes only a cursory glance to see how Mr. Noel and the squatter photographed (below) in Rock Hall, St. Phillip differ, and where a ‘workfare’ vs. welfare intervention is appropriate. The Government, through its Ministry of Social Transformation and the agencies under its purview, should look to enlist these squatters in livelihood improvement programmes to improve their earning capacity and remove them from the poverty trap, and extend the services of the Urban Development Commission such that it is able to provide housing that can be purchased by squatters and the working poor.
Much of the information in this post is outdated. Current recruitment needs can be found at the Bajan Dream vacancy page and operational updates can be found in the more recent blog posts.
Update [01/12/08]: It seems the Barbados Free Press has now itself put its support behind the Opposition Party, expressing its wish for them to form the next government of Barbados (link) after originally criticizing us for our original position in this post (link).
First of all, allow me to apologize for the sporadic postings - and accept my tongue in cheek excuse that nothing significant by way of poverty alleviation has occurred in Barbados to merit too-frequent posts on this blog. This is not to say, however, that the plight of the poor in Barbados doesn’t deserve to be addressed with renewed urgency. In fact, it would seem as though the stories of hardship and suffering from Barbados’ poor make national headlines at least twice a week - and those are just the stories that make it, e.g.
CORLENE STRAUGHN lives in a dilapidated house that is about to collapse on her and her family.
So bad are their living conditions that for the past four years an attorney, who got involved with the family through the law courts, has been trying to get assistance for them, to no avail. (link)
Understandably then, it was with some bemusement that I read the excerpts from Prime Minister Arthur’s budget presentation yesterday in Parliament, which the Nation PR Machine Newspaper dubbed as a speech laden with Goodies for the Poor, notwithstanding the fact that after more than a decade in office the plight of the majority poor has largely remained unchanged, even after similar idle promises. My intention is not to take the Prime Minister to task on his contribution; indeed I laud every effort to address poverty in Barbados - but I’m cautious not to jump on the bandwagon and sing in any How Great Thou Art choir for the ruling government based on flowery words and PR rhetoric.
Bandwagonists do nothing for progress. Indeed, in the words of Albert Einstein, ‘he who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake…’ For that reason (and at the risk of being labeled as partisan and an opposition supporter), I will not - like the Barbadians pictured to the right - shower adulation on the PM and his 13 year old rhetoric. While as a PR practitioner I can congratulate him on his ability to maintain popular opinion even in light of dire circumstances (increased debt, less foreign exchange, increasing land sales to foreigners, spiraling cost of living, et al.), I really have to say that this Prime Minister - and his cabinet - have left the average Barbadian wanting… no, not wanting another luxury golf course or condominium, or wanting Cove Bay and other Barbadian birthrights to be sold to the highest bidder - but wanting urgent social change. Indeed, relief from the burdens that increasingly make life as a poor or middle class Barbadian exceedingly difficult.
It was therefore with some degree of satisfaction that I listened to the Opposition Leader, Mr. David Thompson, in his response to the Prime Minister’s presentation. Delving into the fluff to ask poignant questions on the Prime Minister’s constant wont to sell what little land Barbados has left to foreign interests, questioning the efficacy of setting up consumer advice boards to address an out of control cost of living and taking him to task on the state of the dying Queen Elizabeth Hospital - Thompson displayed, to my mind, the type of strength and foresight that is so badly needed in the Opposition Leader of Barbados today, especially when there seems to be increasing underground sentiment that the PM speaks for the wealthy few, rather than the struggling masses. Hopefully, Thompson’s speech can be made available online along with the Prime Minister’s contribution soon for others to compare and make their own conclusions.
For my contribution, I’d like to congratulate the D’s for getting their act together and for starting on the path to become a strong and formidable challenge to the ruling party. This, I must repeat, is not born of any partisan position on my end - rather, it is born of the realization that a strong democracy needs a strong opposition - and strong oppositions make for strong candidates for the upcoming General Elections.
Related links
Prime Minister’s Budget
http://www.nationnews.com/www/budget/budget07.pdf
Opposition’s reply
http://www.nationnews.com/www/budget/budgreply07.pdf
Veronica Jones with three of her children standing in front of her dilapidated home.. a few miles away from the Cricket World Cup neighbourhood…
I didn’t think the chance to highlight the hypocrisy in Barbados’ relief programme would come just a day after our Poor and undersheltered.. article below, but thankfully it did.
Try to juxtapose the rationale behind the Kensington Beautification Project that Government has taken to one hundred homes that lead to Kensington Oval, and the plight of Veronica Jones, a woman who lives in little more than a shed a few miles away with a leaking roof, no electricitiy, an outdoor pit toilet and uneven, sinking flooring. Understand that Veronica also has three young children, the oldest of whom is probably no more than six years, while her youngest is just six and a half months.
Now, to my mind, if Government’s new initiative that we mentioned yesterday was anything more than superficial, and if it sincerely had the interests of the undersheltered at heart, wouldn’t it rush to people like Veronica? Unfortunately for Ms. Jones, she’s a little too far away from Kensington Oval to deserve help under this project - tourists will have no business being in her low income neighbourhood of Pasture Road, Lower Burney and they wouldn’t have to endure the eyesore of seeing this woman and her three children in a shed.
The idiocy and hypocrisy in the house repair segment of the Kensington Beautification Project deserves highlighting at every opportunity. Treating dilapidated houses and the poor families that occupy them as inanimate objects that sully the aesthetics of the Cricket World Cup match venue and its environs is by no means, and under no circumstances, an approach to relief… especially considering tht they are so many more like them who will not get even the basic repairs for years to come.
The facts and the reality of the relief programme in Barbados leave me to conclude little else!
If the Government has millions to beautify Kensington Road, and even more millions to spend on nonsense like flyovers and other ill thought-out projects, can’t it take the BDS$30,000 (US$15,000) that is needed to build a two bedroom house for this woman, and others like her under the Urban Development Commission’s Home Repair/Replacement Programme?
Not surprisingly, Veronica did contact the Urban Development Commission three years ago in 2004, and cleary has gotten no help up until this point. Ironically, the Urban Development Commission is an integral part of the Kensington Beautification Project, which has been implemented in the wink of an eye - long after 2004. The expediency of (’relief?’) projects like Government’s project at Kensington has, sadly, not reached Veronica (unless one counts the tarpaulin she received to cover her roof) - yet Barbadians are expected to cheer and be happy when Government starts repairing homes that were bad for decades just to make Cricket World Cup venues look good?
Nonsense.
Related links: ‘Home plea for family of six’ (Barbados Nation Newspaper)
http://www.nationnews.com/story/292182475615899.php
Barbadians seem to have an addage for everything and I was particularly pleased when I saw the House Proud article in today’s Nation Newspaper because it gave me the chance to remember that old saying about showing a clean face and having a dirty back…
While the photo of Kathy Todd’s chattel house being refurbished is heartwarming, one can’t help but to be cynical after realizing that this refurbishment is all some superficial part of a project that seeks to beautify the roads leading to Kensington Oval - a venue for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup tournament.
While these practises are quite normal even for developed countries who are preparing to host events of this nature, it seems almost obvious that these houses would otherwise not have been touched had Barbados not had the honour to host the tournament. Certainly one finds it difficult to argue to the contrary, since these houses were approaching dilapidation for years, the same way that their occupants were poor for quite some time. To think that this recent interest in housing relief is altruistic and that its launch is in someway coincidental with the tournament would defy intelligence, so I am content to speculate that this is not the case until convinced otherwise -as impossible as that seems.
Having surmised that this is a Cricket World Cup addendum rather than an actual poverty intervention and housing relief project, I must still be careful not to discount the little good that this project is doing. One hundred houses and then some are in line for repairs under this project, and while we don’t know how intensive these repairs will be (are they confined to repairing the cosmetics of the house that the cricket fans will see from the roads?, or have they realized that houses are more than scenery?), we agree that this is long overdue on the part of Government. Too long, in fact.
Now that foreign cricket fans to our island would not see the reality of poverty and hardship as reflected in the houses of these folks on Kensington New Road and its environs, what else is left for this project? Will its supporters see the need to apply the same rationale to the myriad of other poor neighbourhoods across the island? Moreover, will this new efficiency and expediency in the public sector that now sees projects like these being undertaken in the squint of an eye also maintain for the hitherto-lethargic approach to state housing relief and poverty intervention (read: will the UDC stop taking years to provide homes and repairs)? What is being done beyond improving housing cosmestics? Will the poor in these communities receieve any assistance by way of poverty intervention excercises? Or is poverty really not the concern at this time so long as visitors don’t think it’s there?
These and other questions continue to boggle my mind (and I wonder why the media hasn’t asked these questions)… but I am reminded to tread cautiously in my critique because, after all, this is Barbados.
Update: For the benefit of foreign readers, I’d like to point out that the manager of this Kensington Beautifucation Project is Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, the incumbent government’s candidate for the City of Bridgetown in the upcoming General Elections in 20007/08. The ‘little good’ that this project is doing just got even smaller, in my opinion.
Related links: ‘House Proud’ (Barbados Nation Newspaper)
http://www.nationnews.com/story/291607655478590.php
“These fields and hills beyond recall are now our very own”
- Barbados National Anthem
Oh the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Barbados celebrated forty years of independence just two weeks ago, and it seems that all we have to show for it is a nice flag and a tear-jerking national anthem whose words hold less and less significance every day.
Am I being overly dramatic? I think not.
If the most poignant feature of colonialism is foreign ownership, I reckon that Barbados is more a colony today than it ever was… and it doesn’t take much more than a cursory glance at every available piece of land - every area of once-natural beauty - to realize that this is true.
Luxury villas, condominums and multi-million dollar estates for the rich, famous (and foreign) are being erected at a mindblowing rate in our little 166 sq. mile island while the poor become poorer, cost of living grows higher, and the prospects of young men and women aspiring to be land and home owners dwindles more and more everyday.
Our government certainly knows what its doing - and I’m sure that selling off every bit of Barbados is indeed the best solution for our country. After all, what’s land in a island as small as Barbados? And certainly Barbadians aren’t good enough to deserve the chance to live on ‘certain’ land… they should be contented with the UDC’s tenentry land offerings and shut up.
Anyway, for what it’s worth.. take a gander at the most recent piece of Barbados that will soon be sold to the highest bidder. Pictured above is Cove Bay in the parish of St. Lucy, an area of unspoilt beauty where Barbadians from all walks of life go, relax, picnic and feel proud to be a Bajan.
I wonder what we will have left to be proud of in a few years…
Related link: Barbados Tourism Investment Co. advertises Cove Bay “opportunity”
