Cricket: Back to the basics, says PM

The people of Barbados can expect the Government to launch a major cricket initiative very soon.

As she addressed the audience of the Queen’s College Speech Day and Prize Giving Ceremony, Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, revealed that the current administration was working on a “major cricket initiative”, however, she sent persons back to the drawing board as the initiative she was presented with was simply a “school programme”.

“If we want to create a platform for intergenerational communication and intergenerational support and interclass support and all other things that make us a balanced and safe society then we need to go back and create these institutions in our communities,” she said.

She believed that getting back to these institutions in the communities that created a sense of team work among the youth was important, adding that even though her Government was working hard to solve the debt issues, and create new investment opportunities in Barbados, it would mean nothing if “we don’t get the equation right for you to be the future of this country”

She told the students that the measurement of their success was not in scholarships and degrees alone, but in their human character and their ability to “live good with one another and in your ability to manage conflict.”

She believed that in order to get this achieved, the nation would have to work together to teach these important character traits to the youth of the community.

The Prime Minister went on to note that the Government was about to identify 500 vulnerable families in Barbados, and stated that they wanted families to “twin” with them, as she believed that simply putting money in a charity was not enough to help these families.

“It is about you engaging and encouraging them and of your own perception determining how you and your circle of friends at church, work or community can make a difference to help those 500 families move from a journey of dependence to independence and when we finish with those 500 then we can move to the next 500,” she said.

“The Government can’t do it alone, it is the people of the nation that will make a difference, and it is the children.”