Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Kerrie Symmonds, has warned that complacency and declining professional standards are creeping across Barbados, and must be confronted if the country is serious about building what he termed “a standards-driven economy”.
Speaking in the House of Assembly on Tuesday as he tabled the Copyright Bill 2025, Symmonds contended that the problems extended well beyond any single sector, pointing to issues with public service vehicles (PSVs), law, medicine and some customer-related services.
The minister referenced recent public concern about safety, reliability and conduct in the PSV sector, including Monday’s incident where more than two dozen school children were injured when a ZR overturned outside The Lester Vaughan School in St Thomas, triggering a mass casualty response.
“Another pitfall we see is in the public transportation sector and other sectors — let me not just say public transportation — where standards of business in Barbados are not rising. They are in fact in danger of falling.
“Irrespective of what sector you go, you are seeing an element of complacency creeping into the way in which people are doing business in this country.”
Symmonds stressed that the lapses were not confined to the transportation industry alone.
“So, I don’t only want to make it about a bus, a minibus that turned over with the children in it, but we know that in that sector, standards are falling. We also know… that standards are falling in your profession and mine.
“We know that the sense of unaccountability to clients is a serious thing in the legal profession. We know that standards are falling in the medical profession,” Symmonds further added.
While he did not list cases in detail, his remarks came against the backdrop of recurring public complaints across sectors.
These include concerns ranging from prolonged turnaround times and issues at healthcare facilities, to attorneys being brought before the law courts charged with stealing from their clients and customer-service lapses in the banking, retail and hospitality sectors.
In each case, Symmonds suggested, the pattern was similar: a normalising of mediocrity, and a fading sense of duty to clients and the public.
“So, let us not make it about any one category or sector of the society.
“We have to look at Barbados in a holistic way, and see whether or not we are being true to ourselves in building up what I would want to call a standards-driven economy, an economy in which we are asking all players, irrespective of what you do, to do it to the very best of your ability and in accordance with a certain minimum standard,” Symmonds said.
(SB)
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