Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has dismissed suggestions that Barbados opening its borders to full freedom of movement in CARICOM is an attempt to pad the voters’ list ahead of the next general election.
Warning that Barbados “is in a dangerous place with respect to its population”, and that an adequate supply of labour was key to economic growth, she slammed Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne for, in her view, “creating anxiety and xenophobia”.
Mottley was speaking in the House of Assembly during debate on the Caribbean Community (Free Movement Of Nationals) Bill, 2025.
It relates to the October 1 freedom of movement regime among Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
She said the Representation Of The People Act stated clearly, and was repeated in the Bill, that a person could not vote without being present as a Commonwealth citizen for three years.
“I trust and pray . . . that Barbadians will walk this road with us, and that they understand this is not about electoral fortunes.
“I give you the assurance, Mr Speaker, that they do not need Caribbean nationals to beat the Democratic Labour Party in the next election,” Mottley said during her near hour-long contribution.
The Prime Minister told the House that she was “truly bothered when you have a member of the Democratic Labour Party, who is a lawyer and who served on the Electoral and Boundaries Commission on behalf of the previous Leader of the Opposition, and he could continue to cast aspersions and insinuations that this
is being done to pad a voters’ list.
“Because the one thing that a member of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission must know is the Representation Of The People Act. So that even if that fanciful folly that they are engaged in was even to have an element of any form of truth, those persons could not vote until after this term comes to a constitutional end in 2027,” she said.
Mottley reminded that she “already had cause to tell [Thorne] on the voter padding allegations, ‘Put up or shut up’, because the last time he brought those allegations was in relation to Chinese workers being able to vote in this country”.
She called the Opposition Leader’s contribution to the debate “an embarrassing and lazy excuse to what is truly a seminal moment in the history of not just the regional integration, but in this country’s development”.
Quoting data from the Social And Economic Report for 2024, the Prime Minister reiterated that Barbados’ declining population had major implications for the country’s economic growth and social security system.
“In that period between 2001 and 2015, you had a drop of 1 175 births, or to put it another way, more than a 25 per cent drop in the number of births in this country, while deaths remained more or less constant,” she said.
“You’ve gone from a height of 4 052 and 22 years later, you’re at 2 229. That is almost a 50 per cent decline.
“In terms of deaths, you, all of a sudden, had 3 360 deaths, because the population is ageing, so you have more people who are elderly.”
Mottley added: “You only had to listen to some of the Parish Speaks and Ideas Forum to hear parish by parish by parish, how low school numbers are in some of the schools in this country.
“There are some primary schools that were built to have 450, 500 children, and they are now struggling to have 60 and 70 children.
“In total, Barbados had 48 218 children in primary and secondary school in the year 2015. Barbados, today, at the end of the school year 2024/2025, had 38 965 children.” (SC)
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