Archive for February, 2008
Bajans can now send money OUT via Western Union
De Standpipe Crew welcomes this new development. It was very annoying that for many years we could RECEIVE money from outside of Barbados via Western Union but (except for a few brief time periods) we could not use the same service to send money out of the country to our family, friends and loved ones. The convenience and good sense of this latest financial service helps us move towards world-class status. All of the people involved in making it happen are to be highly commended.
De Standpipe Crew
http://www.nationnews.com/story/298733432239902.php
Easier to send money out
From today, Barbadians can send foreign currency out of the island through Western Union’s operations at RBTT’s commercial banks.
And while the island’s growing immigrant and migrant worker population were factors in the move, RBTT’s marketing and customer service manager Frank Drakes said it was also a service demanded by many Barbadians.
The move was announced during a Press conference with top officials of the world’s largest money transfer service providers and RBTT at the bank’s Broad Street, Bridgetown office yesterday.
According to Tarcisio Bortoletto, Western Union’s regional vice-president for the Caribbean, Barbados was among the very few countries that regulated foreign exchange outflows, but the RBTT and Western Union had worked with the Central Bank of Barbados to ensure the remittances could be facilitated through the money transfers.
Money transfers out of the country as gifts are limited to the equivalent of $10 000 annually.
President and chief executive officer of RBTT Barbados John Beale, said the usual checks to ensure that the process was not tainted by money laundering would be undertaken.
“Western Union has the experience of working in over 200 countries and with the globalisation process, the demand to screen to ensure that those transactions are safe is becoming standard.
“It is pretty much well known what are the controls that you have to have in place and we are bringing the knowledge . . . and adapting to the reality of Barbados, working with the Central Bank and RBTT . . . and between the three of us we are very confident that the transactions that will be coming in and out are absolutely legitimate transactions,” Bortoletto stressed. (GE)
6 comments Friday, 29 February 2008, 12:11 am
DLP Manifesto Promises: 64 Days Left (and 1 Promise already broken)
One third of the 100 days have already gone! But doan worry… ’cause Bajans got short memories.
The Democratic Labour Party 2008 Manifesto made a number of promises to the people of Barbados should that party be voted into government. Three of them were promised “within 100 days” and five of them were promised “immediately”. The first official day of work for the new government was Tuesday 22 January 2008. It is now the night of Tuesday 26 February 2008 and there are 64 days left until the deadline of 30 April 2008.
One of the promises which was to happen “immediately” has already been broken.
The promises are:
PROMISED WITHIN 100 DAYS
Page 9. In the first 100 days of the new DLP administration remove VAT from building materials on houses valued up to $400,000.
Page 12. To this end and within the first 100 days of our administration the Democratic Labour Party government will convene a National Consultation on Education…
Page 42. The DLP Government will therefore: In the first 100 days introduce the Agriculture Protection Act that will require a 2/3 majority of both houses of parliament for a change of use of land from agriculture. We will reserve 30, 000 acres for agricultural use.
PROMISED IMMEDIATELY
Page 11. A new DLP Government will immediately embark on a health promotion campaign to sensitize the public to the dangers of unhealthy lifestyles;
Page 24. Immediately review the current Central Bank procedures for approving capital account transactions with a view to simplifying and speeding up the approval (or denial) process for restricted transactions.
Page 33. Additionally a new DLP administration will: Re-examine the Port charges with a view to significantly reducing these to manufacturers. Tonnage dues are charged twice – on raw materials when imported and again on finished products when being exported. This needs to be addressed immediately since it is a burdensome cost. Free along side charges (FAS) continue to be out of proportion with our competitors.
BROKEN PROMISE!
Page 36. Conversely, a new DLP government will move to immediately enact a comprehensive national Labour Rights legislative compendium which will include the following:
• A Full Employment Rights Act
• An Alternative Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Committee
• A Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act
• National minimum wages legislation
• Legislation fully recognizing Trade Unions.
Page 48. The Democratic Labour Party will also:
Immediately introduce integrity legislation requiring
• a declaration of assets by public officials,
• a Code of Conduct for Ministers,
• a new Freedom of Information law,
• amendments to the Defamation laws and
• new constitutional provisions to rationalise the powers of the Prime Minister.
SOURCE: http://www.barbadosvotes.org/pdf/2008_DLP_Manifesto.pdf
The people of this country are watching and waiting (some like hawks, some like vultures) to see how many of these manifesto promises will be fulfilled by the new DLP government.
36 gone, 64 to go.
De Standpipe Crew
1 comment Tuesday, 26 February 2008, 8:32 pm
New act to cover hairstyles. Well done Minister Ronald Jones!
De Standpipe Crew congratulates Minister of Education Ronald Jones for acting swiftly and vigorously in response to the recent blatant act of discrimination against the young people of this country who exercise their right to braid their hair.
Well done! You have our solid support.
De Standpipe Crew
http://www.nationnews.com/story/297632917106228.php
Published on: 2/26/08.
by YVETTE BEST
MINISTER OF EDUCATION Ronald Jones is hinting that the new Education Act will take into consideration the now controversial issue of appropriate hairstyles for school, which is currently left to the interpretation of administrators.
He said the new act and new regulations would be presented to Parliament as soon as the necessary review of the current act and accompanying regulations had been completed.
One interpretation saw five students being barred from classes at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) last week for wearing locks. But, deputy principal Merton Forde said the students would be allowed back in school if they presented documents proving they were part of the Rastafari faith.
“Generally the laws speak to people carrying themselves in a manner which is not injurious to the health of others, or injurious to themselves. And what had me aghast, is that what seems to be appearing is a conflict of what one might argue is traditional culture and modern culture, even though the modern culture is part of the ancestral culture of Africa in this context,” Jones said.
He cautioned that it was impossible for the act to cover everything and, of necessity, it must still be general.
“Common sense always must dictate what we do. Even though there are laws written down, common sense must [prevail] in circumstances such as those that confronted the administration at the school . . . . There must always be general terms used in education, because from the time you start to demarcate, you’re into a whole long troublesome process,” he argued.
He said he was “puzzled” by the SJPP development, because the students would have been in school for seven months with the locks and it only became an issue last week.
Final year student Andre Hall has since been readmitted. The 24-year-old student, of the air-conditioning refrigeration department, produced a letter from the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari saying that he wore his locks for “religious purposes”.
Minister Jones told the DAILY NATION last Thursday that as far as he was aware, all five students should have been back in school.
“One could not understand, or for that matter appreciate, the argument that a citizen of Barbados must bring any kind of document to any institution, asking them to prove if they belong to any religion, caste, sex or creed.
“That is trampling on a person’s civil rights [and] their religious rights, their democratic rights in our society, which holds up the individual as paramount, even though within the confines of the law. And there should not be any law in any educational institution which debars young people from getting an education,” he stated.
1 comment Tuesday, 26 February 2008, 7:54 am
Hair Discrimination Must Stop! Male Braiding is a Proven African Custom!
De Standpipe Crew joins its brothers and sisters at Bajan Free Press in expressing our outrage at the discrimination being attempted at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic. We are united in this matter… as tight as cornrow plaits!
De Standpipe Crew
Hair Discrimination Must Stop! Male Braiding is a Proven African Custom!
The Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic wants to stop young Bajan men from getting education based on their hairstyle, but we commend Minister of Education Ronald Jones for defending the right of our young men to wear their hair in braids.
There are several African societies where men wear (or used to wear) braided or plaited hair, including…
Young Maasai warriors in Kenya and Tanzania,
Young Samburu warriors in Kenya,
Yoruba Shango priests in Nigeria,
Osogbo, Nigeria
and the Mungiki sect in Kenya.
As black people who are descendants of West African slaves, we in Barbados MUST defend our rights, even within our own country, and especially within our own country.
There is no room in Barbados for discrimination against black people and black hairstyles, especially within our educational institutions. Enforce the rules to keep hairstyles neat, but do not discriminate against people because of hairstyle.
Bajan Free Press
http://www.nationnews.com/story/299461955129249.php
NOT IN HAIR!
 |
Stories by Katrina Bend
Unless you are a Rastafarian, don’t wear your hair like one if you want to study at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP).
That regulation right now bars five young men from completing their two-year programme at the institution in The Pine, St Michael.
Deputy principal of the SJPP, Merton Forde, confirmed the ban on Tuesday and said if the students were willing to show they belonged to the Rastafarian sector, they would not be barre from any classes.
Unhealthy
“We have regulations concerning the type of headdress considered to be unhealthy to students around them. We expect students to conform to those regulations. The students were told that their dreadlocks would not have been a problem once they are part of the Rastafarian faith,” Forde said.
One of the affected students, Carlos Adams, 22, of the Electrical Department, said that since last Wednesday, there were a series of meetings about how he and four other males should wear their hair.
Asked for letters
They are in the Electrical Engineering, Micro-Electronics and Refrigeration and Engineering departments.
When they returned to class last Friday, personnel from Student Affairs asked for letters stating their dreadlocks were religion-related. Failing that, they would have to cut their hair in order to attend classes.
Adams said: “The only way we are allowed into our class is with a letter from the Rastafarian organisations [but] the organisation said they cannot issue letters to people with long hair. You are a brethren because
of your heart.
“I think it is some sort of prejudice. Why should I bring in a letter saying that I am some part of a movement . . . . We are not little kids going to school up here. We are not seeking to change the rules in the institution. We just want to go to class.”
Damien Weekes, 24, also of the Electrical Department said security personnel refused to let him enter the institution last Friday with his hairstyle.
In the past, Weekes unlocked his hair and wore his hair in an afro style because personnel felt the students could conceal weapons under the tams (headdress) worn over the dreadlocked hair.
Adams and Weekes said when they attended the interview and orientation sessions, they were told that dreadlocked hair was not a problem, as long as it was well groomed and pulled backwards.
The students are in the final semester of their first year of their two-year programmes. They are missing the core subject, electrical installation, and if they don’t successfully complete this, they say they cannot go on to pursue studies for their City Guild certificate.
http://www.nationnews.com/story/299461954952127.php
Jones knocks ban on locks
The dreadlocks hairstyle ban at Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) has been criticised as discriminatory by Minister of Education Ronald Jones.
“No child or student studying can be excluded from a school as result of a hairstyle, particularly in a situation where they are kept in a clean and inoffensive manner. So I’m surprised that that would even arise. It would then be termed discriminatory circumstances, but nothing has reached me here in relation to that particular manner,” Jones told the
DAILY NATION yesterday.
“These are not little children, this is a tertiary institution. And even though we want persons to be decorous, to treat adults like children would be a no-no. Once the hairstyles are clean and conform to generally accepted standards, no young person should be left out of school . . . . Most of these things have to be handled sensitively otherwise they would come over as discriminatory,” the minister added.
Backward
Director of the Commission of Pan-African Affairs, Ikael Tafari, who is a part of the Rastafari Movement, described the SJPP regulation as backward, discriminatory, ridiculous and a dangerous practice.
“It’s a violation of a religion. People like me, Adonijah and other Rastafari; 1 000 in the island, they are stopping people from getting skill training on dreadlocks . . . How are we going to really determine Rastafari? There are different beliefs . . . . You don’t have to join an organisation to be a Rastafari . . . . Barbados has to get serious. We are a multi-religious society. They must stop discrimination.”
2 comments Thursday, 21 February 2008, 10:23 am
Union blinks first. Strike called off.
And the union blinked first.
On one day, off the next. We see this flip-flopping by the Barbados Workers Union as a sign of weakness, even though we ourselves can’t decide which side is right or wrong in this mixed-up Royal Shop/Sandy Lane/national strike matter.
Success comes to those who are decisive and those who endure to the end.
De Standpipe Crew
http://www.cbc.bb/content/view/14218/10/
Strike on hold
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
The planned nationwide general strike scheduled for tomorrow has been put on hold.
Over the past few weeks the Barbados Workers Union has been fighting for the re-instatement of workers at the Royal Shop in Bridgetown and at Sandy Lane.
Some 30 workers at the two establishments had walked off the job in solidarity with two colleagues they claim had been unfairly treated by management of the two companies.
The decision to call off the strike for tomorrow come about after meetings between the BWU and Prime Minister David Thompson.
“As Prime Minister he is not fully aware of what was going on in those areas because he is only just been made Prime Minister.
“That he’s very interested in the climate in which industrial harmony will be the order of the day.
“Three is that he believes that given time his Minister of Labour will be able to make a recommendation to the parties and that he would ask us the Barbados Workers Union in the national interest to pull back from the strike for tomorrow Wednesday.
“Mindful that the Prime Minister might have done this since we heard yesterday that he had been trying to contact me I did seek to have an assurance from the very large group that was present that if an approach were made and if that approach saw the government as being keen to affect a settlement where people would have respect and would not be trampled, that we would in the public interest call off the strike for tomorrow Wednesday.
“So we are announcing to the public of Barbados that the strike scheduled for tomorrow morning starting at 00.01 am Wednesday that strike is no longer on.
“We will keep the public informed regarding the ongoing discussions between Sandy Lane and Royal Shop and ourselves.
“We are expecting that they would realize that hardlining will force hardlining from the trade union and we expect them to exercise the same level of willingness to treat in a human manner what is a human problem.
http://www.nationnews.com/story/294325875078180.php
SHUT SHOP!
THIS IS not a stay-at-home demonstration. It will be a national stoppage!
Those were the words of general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), Sir Roy Trotman, last night. Several workers’ representatives turned up at the union’s Solidarity House auditorium, where one after the other they offered their unwavering support to the union and condemned owners of Sandy Lane Hotel and The Royal Shop over their refusal to reinstate 30 employees who were dismissed after they walked off the job.
Sir Roy, who had just spent eight hours earlier in the day engaged in meetings with both owners and their representatives at the Labour Office, listened attentively to each speaker before updating the packed auditorium.
He said they had “instructed very strongly” that there would be a work stoppage of all members of the BWU “because they believe that the behaviour of both companies is unsatisfactory and cannot be tolerated”.
“There has to be a change not only in the two companies but in the thinking of employers generally about the freedom of workers.
“We are preparing during the course of tomorrow for a shutdown and we are going to be taking our position and remaining with that unless in the intervening period something happens that would allow for us to feel that a serious effort towards a solution is in the offing,” said an upbeat Sir Roy.
He added the union was prepared to give respect to whoever wanted to bring about a resolution, even at the 11th hour.
Sir Roy said union members would be given instructions during the course of today on what the protest would entail.
“Wednesday is a demonstration. If after Wednesday, there is no effort made by any of the parties to try to reach an accommodation, then we will have another go but the strike will be longer,” he stated.
Add comment Wednesday, 20 February 2008, 1:15 am
Matthew Farley should shut up about cornrow Senator
Matthew Farley should just shut up with his blathering about Senator Damien Griffith’s hairstyle. He is vexed because the young senator has his hair plaited in cornrows. We don’t wear them ourselves, and while most of us don’t personally approve of men wearing braided hair, we readily acknowledge and strongly defend the right of any man to wear his hair as he pleases. Does anyone remember the Ingrid Quarless matter when she was fired from her job in Barbados for wearing braided hair? Such an act by any employer would be unthinkable in Barbados today.
So Mr. Farley, please shut up and wisen up. We are long past the days of powdered wigs. Senator Griffith should be judged by his performance and his performance alone.
De Standpipe Crew
http://www.nationnews.com/editorial/292550790276140.php
Cornrows not nice for Senate
by MATTHEW FARLEY
THE ANNOUNCEMENT of the various members of the Upper House of Parliament in Barbados was rather refreshing, especially given the array of interests that are well represented.
As an educator, administrator and a proud citizen of Barbados, I extend warmest congratulations to all the newly appointed members of this august chamber.
While following the coverage in the Press, my attention was readily drawn to the youngest senator Damien Griffith. I learned that he is the president of the Young Democrats and Prime Minister David Thompson must be commended for having the foresight to include this young man who I am sure will have a rich future in politics, if this is indeed his choice.
This country has need of young bright, energetic and visionary leaders whose charge it will be to take this country into the future. Let me also say that Senator Kerry-Ann Ifill is also very deserving of her appointment to the legislature.
Well dressed
But of all the things that struck me in the coverage was the appearance of Senator Griffith. To be more specific, the fact that he attended the swearing-in ceremony with his hair in cornrow style. While he was otherwise well dressed I am of the view that the hairstyle was inappropriate, given the traditions of our Parliament.
I know that those within the hearing of my voice would be labelling me as part of the colonial past. On the contrary, I understand the concept of independence. I understand the importance of a people determining their destiny. I also understand neo-colonialism in all its dimensions.
As an educator I grapple daily with the tension between change and conservation; what should be changed and what should be conserved. It is a tightrope that we walk daily.
I am one of those vociferous Barbadians who believe that Admiral Horatio Nelson has no place in our National Heroes Square. I support the Caribbean Court of Justice and, like the former Prime Minister, I like the concept of CSME [CARICOM Single Market and Economy].
But I still maintain that we have allowed falling standards to pull down the dignity of our institutions. I visited the Queen Elizabeth Hospital recently and, much to my consternation, saw a nurse in uniform with a ring in her nostril. Persons like Senator Griffith need to be mentored into norms and standards of our institutions.
Inappropriate
I do not think that his hairstyle is linked to any religious creed. In the same way that the proponents of standard English are insisting that parents must insist on their children understanding when and where, I think that similarly, someone should have told Senator Griffith that his cornrow style, nice though it may look, was inappropriate for the august chamber we call the Senate.
I call on those guardians of standards and those who see themselves as custodians of our institutions, not to condemn, but to caution against permitting fashion, fads and elements of the bashment culture to invade our institutions.
I acknowledge that the High Court judges no longer wear the traditional wigs and I imagine that other changes have been advocated over the years. But to jump to the elevation of “cornrows” to Parliament is more than a quantum leap of standards.
Won’t be long
If this trend is allowed to catch root in the Senate, it would not be long before female Senators flaunt their breasts in the face of the President of this august chamber, wash cloths and scarves hang loosely from the pockets of those who are called to service in this high office and hipster jeans and tattoo-bearing butts become the norm.
It won’t be long before other young men whose potential matches that of Senator Griffith saunter into the Upper House of Parliament, exposing their brand-name boxers and wearing trousers which have long deserted their butts.
One of the opponents of same-sex marriages in the United States, who was concerned about our seeming willingness to accept all kinds of unions, noted that once we start doing this, one day some man will assert his right to get married to his “donkey”.
The point is that once we allow and accept any and everything in the name of “rights”, where do we stop?
Damien Griffith must be told that he is now Senator Damien Griffith. He must be told that whether he likes it or not, he is now a role model for the youth whose interests he represents.
While all of a sudden he does not lose all of his individual rights, he must constantly gauge his actions against the kinds of signals he may be sending to his young colleagues.
Senator Griffith must be told that while such a style would be appropriate for the Barbados Music Awards, it was inappropriate for a swearing-in ceremony at Government House. Senator, “to whom much is given, much is expected”.
Being a senator has nothing to do with looking cute or sexy but our behaviour must respect the standards and the traditions of this esteemed institution. I wish you well in your tenure as a member of our Upper Chamber, Senator Griffith.
http://www.nationnews.com/story/325601776907902.php
Head over hair!
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by AMANDA LYNCH-FOSTER
YOU CAN’T JUDGE a book by its cover.
It’s what inside that counts.
Substance over style.
There are a million sayings that touch on the attitude which has been spreading among Barbadian employers and managers in recent times.
Rosalind Jackson, managing director of human resource and recruitment firm Caribbean Catalyst and former human resource manager for Ernst and Young, said that employers’ attitudes towards employee appearance have become more liberal.
“Things have changed dramatically. Ten years ago we would have asked people to refrain from wearing [certain styles]
in the workplace. I think we have gone beyond this. People are now recognising what is substance and what is form,” said Jackson.
This attitude did not come easily – at least not for those who suffered discrimination in years gone by for such things as wearing braids, dreadlocks or even twists.
Twenty-one years ago Ingrid Quarless, an activities hostess with Grand Bay Beach Resort (now Grand Barbados Beach Resort), was fired for refusing to change her braided hairstyle. At that time, she did not even get the support of the Barbadian public.
“They [the public] were very demoralising. I became a laughing stock. I was mocked. I became ‘the lady with the braids’. So it became like a neurotic woman’s fight and not a fight that should have been for all of us,” she told the SUNDAY SUN in 2005.
It turned out that it was a fight for everyone. Just a decade later, in the mid-1990s, braids were no longer considered unprofessional and were sported by professional women, including managers.
However, what many Barbadians still had a problem with was natural hairstyles. Cabinet Minister Elizabeth Thompson stirred up controversy in 1996 and 1997 when she began wearing her hair in natural twists and ‘nubian knots’.
While some lauded her for her choice, others were not complimentary. Thompson related to THE NATION at the time that she was stopped by a woman on Broad Street who told her in no uncertain terms that she did not want a “rasta minister”.
Others declared that her hair looked “picky” and was unbecoming for a woman of her status.
Not only women have been discriminated against for their appearance. Dreadlocked architect Jerome Sealy told the SUNDAY SUN that when he returned to Barbados in 2000 after university, it took him two years before he could get a job in his profession. In the meantime, he worked as a bartender to make a living.
“I was asked to numerous interviews because of my qualifications, only to be invited in, greeted politely and then questioned primarily on my qualifications. They didn’t seem to believe I could be as good as I claimed with my hair. One of my family’s friends and an early mentor of mine spent two minutes staring at my hair until my answers slowly convinced him that he should be looking at my face,” related Sealy.
Yet, at the 2006 Christmas luncheon of the Barbados Institute of Architects, the SUNDAY SUN observed several members sporting dreadlocks. Sealy’s own experience seems to indicate a shift in attitudes.
“I think it would have been a lot easier if I had shaved my head, as advised by almost every adult I spoke to. Not everyone has my perseverance but I have always believed that life is more satisfying when you do things your way. Now everyone loves my hair, and no one mentions anything about cutting it,” he said.
So, besides the battles of the persistent such as Quarless, Thompson and Sealy, what else has precipitated this change?
Eddie “Ahkentoolove” Corbin, lecturer in the Department of Management Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, said globalisation had made employers more worldly and hence, more liberal.
“Many more people are travelling, experiencing different cultures. With globalisation, different employers are coming in with different approaches and different cultural norms. Where we tended to be more conservative, more British in what we had, there are now more American norms,” said Corbin.
Industrial relations officer with the Barbados Employers Confederation, Sandra Cadogan also believed that happenings overseas were having their effect here, particularly battles by the black minorities in the United States and Britain to have their way of dress and styling accepted.
“In the UK and USA people are asserting their rights as ethnic people and in Barbados employees are doing that as well. Before, a person of another colour might be allowed to wear their hair longer whereas they might have expected black people to wear their hair always trimmed and cut, but now people are asserting their rights,” said Cadogan.
Dr Hensley Sobers, human resources manager at the Central Bank of Barbados and president of the Barbados Employers Confederation, said employers now tended to care more about an employee’s talent than his/her appearance.
“The slant, I think, has gone where persons are looking at professionals more from the technical know-how and their academic talent, that they are bringing to the job more than their appearance.”
* amandalynch@nationnews.com
2 comments Friday, 15 February 2008, 4:33 am
DLP Manifesto Promises: 77 Days Left (and 1 Promise already broken)
Man de days gine long hard enuff already, yeah!
The Democratic Labour Party 2008 Manifesto made a number of promises to the people of Barbados should that party be voted into government. Three of them were promised “within 100 days” and five of them were promised “immediately”. The first official day of work for the new government was Tuesday 22 January 2008. It is now the night of Wednesday 13 February 2008 and there are 77 days left until the deadline of 30 April 2008.
One of the promises which was to happen “immediately” has already been broken.
The promises are:
PROMISED WITHIN 100 DAYS
Page 9. In the first 100 days of the new DLP administration remove VAT from building materials on houses valued up to $400,000.
Page 12. To this end and within the first 100 days of our administration the Democratic Labour Party government will convene a National Consultation on Education…
Page 42. The DLP Government will therefore: In the first 100 days introduce the Agriculture Protection Act that will require a 2/3 majority of both houses of parliament for a change of use of land from agriculture. We will reserve 30, 000 acres for agricultural use.
PROMISED IMMEDIATELY
Page 11. A new DLP Government will immediately embark on a health promotion campaign to sensitize the public to the dangers of unhealthy lifestyles;
Page 24. Immediately review the current Central Bank procedures for approving capital account transactions with a view to simplifying and speeding up the approval (or denial) process for restricted transactions.
Page 33. Additionally a new DLP administration will: Re-examine the Port charges with a view to significantly reducing these to manufacturers. Tonnage dues are charged twice – on raw materials when imported and again on finished products when being exported. This needs to be addressed immediately since it is a burdensome cost. Free along side charges (FAS) continue to be out of proportion with our competitors.
BROKEN PROMISE!
Page 36. Conversely, a new DLP government will move to immediately enact a comprehensive national Labour Rights legislative compendium which will include the following:
• A Full Employment Rights Act
• An Alternative Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Committee
• A Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act
• National minimum wages legislation
• Legislation fully recognizing Trade Unions.
Page 48. The Democratic Labour Party will also:
Immediately introduce integrity legislation requiring
• a declaration of assets by public officials,
• a Code of Conduct for Ministers,
• a new Freedom of Information law,
• amendments to the Defamation laws and
• new constitutional provisions to rationalise the powers of the Prime Minister.
SOURCE: http://www.barbadosvotes.org/pdf/2008_DLP_Manifesto.pdf
The people of this country are watching and waiting (some like hawks, some like vultures) to see how many of these manifesto promises will be fulfilled by the new DLP government.
23 gone, 77 to go.
De Standpipe Crew
1 comment Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 9:29 pm
Business as usual
Add comment Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 6:18 am
DLP Manifesto: The First Broken Promise
We never expected they would fail so early in the game.
When the Democratic Labour Party mounted their election campaign a few weeks ago they made a number of promises in their manifesto, including this one:
Page 36. Conversely, a new DLP government will move to immediately enact a comprehensive national Labour Rights legislative compendium which will include the following:
• A Full Employment Rights Act
• An Alternative Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Committee
• A Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act
• National minimum wages legislation
• Legislation fully recognizing Trade Unions.
A mere four weeks after coming to power, they are already notifying us of their FIRST BROKEN PROMISE.
The first official day of work for the new government was Tuesday 22 January 2008. It is now the morning of Tuesday 12 February 2008 and there are 79 days left until the 100-day deadline of 30 April 2008.
Bajan Free Press
http://www.nationnews.com/story/290978295226553.php
Minister: New laws after talks
by YVETTE BEST
THE LEGISLATIVE PROGRAMME for the Ministry of Labour will not be among achievements in the first 100 days of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Government.
Minister responsible, Senator Arni Walters, made the point on Sunday when addressing the half-year meeting of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) at Solidarity House.
He said the legislation would take some time because full consultation with the relevant stakeholders would take place prior to any enactments.
“It is the Government’s intention to obtain broad consensus taking into account the changing international trading environment and the need to preserve employees’ employment rights as enshrined in the Constitution and in compliance with international labour standards,” he said.
The minister also said Government was looking to put in place a number of “contemporary” pieces of employment legislation, entrepreneur structures and resources to assist in providing new employment opportunities and protecting rights.
He added that the Barbadian population needed to “seek to enhance the productive capacity with a view to competing globally”.
Government’s legislative agenda for employment and labour relations is as follows:
1. A full Employment Rights Act.
2. A revised Trade Union And Human Relations Act,
3. A Safety And Health At Work Act,
4. A Sex Discrimination And Harassment Act,
5. Expansion of minimum wage legislation to key sectors,
6. Revision of aspects of the Holiday With Pay Act
7. Revision of aspects of Shop Legislation to bring it in line with contemporary consumer thinking in changing circumstances,
8. To provide for new dispute resolution mechanisms including the revision of the Labour Department Act, the setting of Alternative Dispute Resolution and a system of employment appeal tribunals, and
9. Revised aspects of Public Service legislation.
Add comment Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 4:25 am
Barbados begins to revisit its past
This is a part of our history about which every Bajan should be made aware. We must start to face our past as readily and as confidently as we are facing our future.
De Standpipe Crew
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-slavery10feb10,0,5769836.story
Barbados begins to revisit its past
What isn’t preserved at Sunbury, the most popular tourist site in this former British colony, is the underbelly of its history. There is no trace of the gnarled black hands that cooked the feasts and polished the silver, drove the traps to cotillions and on social calls and worked the plantation.
Although descendants of slaves control the governments in the English-speaking Caribbean, prosper in business and define the image portrayed to the millions who visit the tropical splendor each year, the vestiges of three centuries of bondage are few, as if no one here wants to be reminded.
Doralene Lashley, 43, puts up her hands to halt the conversation when asked whether she or the plantation’s two dozen other employees, most, like her, descended from enslaved Africans brought here during the colonial era, mind that so little of their forebears’ labor and craftsmanship is acknowledged in heritage houses presented to visitors as replicas of the past.
“I personally try not to talk about it. ‘This one did this and that one did that,’ ” Lashley, the catering manager, says distractedly as she checks on the serving trays for a luncheon. “Talking about the past just has a negative impact on the present.”
In Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos, all former British colonies, it has long been popular among small cliques of activists and scholars to swap suits and ties for the printed tunics and head wraps of West Africa. Some have adopted African names to reflect their ancestry or newly embraced Rastafarian lifestyles.
But it wasn’t until last year’s bicentennial of the 1807 abolition of the slave trade by Britain that a serious movement got underway to reflect on the era of slavery here and enshrine its artifacts and lessons in the historical touchstones of each island.
With support from the government, Barbados’ small but evolving community of black history advocates staged commemorative and consciousness-raising events in 2007. A reenactment of the landing of the first European ship, the Orange Blossom, at Holetown drew modest crowds of activists and officialdom in March. The UNESCO Slavery Project erected a sign at the Newton Plantation’s abandoned slave burial site, a one-acre patch behind sprawling sugar-cane fields and a fiberglass boat-building yard.
And at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 11 panels hanging in a back room tell the 400-year history of the brutal slave trade, from the cost in cowrie shells for a slave to the horrific Middle Passage that one in four didn’t survive, to the proud militants such as Barbados’ Bussa whose rebellions helped end slavery.
“There was almost a subconscious need to forget,” Kevin Farmer, the curator for history and archaeology at Barbados Museum, says of the island’s collective evasion of slavery milestones and memorials. “But forgetting is a means to amnesia and the ability for mistakes to be repeated all over again.”
Some see the reluctance of Caribbean blacks to reflect on the slave era as a matter of pride, not shame.
Barbados has the highest standard of living in the Caribbean, and wealth is distributed more equitably here than in the other islands, notes Karl Watson, a history professor at the University of the West Indies. He wrote a commemorative 2007 journal on the island’s development after the end of the slave trade, the British empire’s first step toward emancipation that came to the islands 30 years later.
“It gives us a sense of accomplishment that very few of us are unable to keep our heads above water,” Watson says. “It’s a point of pride that has made us perhaps a little arrogant.”
Local historians have begun to search for sites and artifacts that might be restored to recount the contributions of more than 100,000 Africans brought to Barbados in the 17th and 18th centuries and the generations born into slavery as the property of colonial planters.
A few “slave huts” are maintained at the site of a former plantation on the remote north coast. But the thatched-roof cottages actually were built by Irish servants after they had worked off their seven-year indentures, Farmer says.
He supports the Ministry of Tourism’s nascent effort to find surviving chattel houses — the small homes built by freed slaves that they dismantled and moved from plantation to plantation. He hopes the homes could anchor a future restored village that would be more representative of local history than the heritage mansions long ago shorn of their slave quarters.
Ikael Tafari, a sociologist who heads the Commission on Pan-African Affairs, says it has been a struggle to persuade the Caribbean’s black leaders to take their people’s rightful place in history.
“Pain and humiliation are not something people want to relive,” he says of black Barbadians, who make up 95% of the island’s 290,000 people. “You can’t understand the level of denial about the slave trade that exists at the official level.”
Caribbean cultural leaders have been talking about seeking reparations from the European countries that conducted the slave trade, to go to the African nations where blacks were kidnapped or bought from corrupt tribal chiefs as well as to the former colonies where generations endured poverty and servitude long after emancipation.
The bicentennial events, mostly concentrated in Britain, stirred the first official support for reparations, says Aaron Larrier, a Christian minister and black heritage activist.
After the March 25 anniversary of the end of the British slave trade, the Barbadian Parliament passed a resolution acknowledging for the first time that slavery was a crime against humanity. Prime Minister Owen Arthur has expressed support for reparations, though he has urged those drafting the appeal to focus on educational exchanges and technology transfers rather than cash payments.
Talk of reparations has been heard in the Caribbean since the islands began gaining their independence in the 1960s. But only Haiti, a former French colony, has made a direct appeal. Nearly five years ago, as Haiti was preparing to celebrate the bicentennial of its emergence in 1804 as the first free black nation, then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide submitted a nearly $22-billion demand to France. Paris immediately rejected the April 2003 appeal and it hasn’t been mentioned by subsequent leaders since Aristide was driven into exile a year later.
Those seeking to confront the past say whatever reparation money might be forthcoming should be used to restore vestiges of slave life on the island, to fill in the blank pages of Caribbean history.
But at the Newton Plantation slave burial ground, just a few miles south of Sunbury, there is little evidence that anyone has taken notice of the new historical marker. The simple white sign explains that the site holds the remains of 570 slaves and is the only excavated slave graveyard in the Western Hemisphere.
Veteran taxi driver Martin Codrington didn’t know the memorial existed until an American visitor asked to be taken there. Neither did other drivers he asked for directions, which he eventually got by stopping at the national museum.
“We should know more about what has gone on about us,” says the bemused 60-year-old, adding that schools in his day never mentioned the slave era.
With a glance at the weed-choked site obscured by the boat works and a nearby ranch house, he says, “It would do to fix it up a bit and make it more pleasing.”
1 comment Monday, 11 February 2008, 9:01 am
