A Guy’s View: Slimming for efficiency and perishing from collusion

The bloated public service has been blamed for the ills of our economy. Government expenditure was too high and needed to be cut, so labour had to go, is the story with which we have been bombarded for years.

When this country ran into balance of payments issues in the 1990s, the size of the public service was identified as a significant contributor to that situation. Salaries were cut, workers were sent home and we were warned that good governance demanded that the public service remain lean and productive. The population did not like that message and changed the governing party.

With the hard decisions out of the way, the new administration created institutions that paralleled functions already being carried out by departments of central Government. These were entirely unnecessary for good governance, but were useful to put money in the pockets of supporters and guarantee success in future elections. This strategy worked well.

And the cycle is repeating itself. One feature of these adjustments is that they have never gone far enough to make governance better. They have always been content to take action against the most easily dispensable members of our society and keep in place the inefficiencies that are the real problem.

The wrong thing to do is to blame the inefficiencies of any department or business on the workers at the bottom. The clerks, typists, security officers and lower administrative staff will always only be as efficient as the quality of their supervision and policy directives. If a department is failing, it is not due to the quality of the typing.

It has been reported that the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation is 100 million dollars in debt. This is startling, if this report is true. What is sure, however, is that the news readers or camera persons did not incur that debt.

Bad policy, poor administrative procedures, condoning non-performance, employing low-skilled persons, slack supervision, and many other factors must have led to the accumulation of this huge debt. None of the persons who will be sent home from that entity would have contributed to these factors. Yes, some of them may have taken advantage of the environment created by the sleepers above them, but they just decided to go along for the ride and make free money, but free money which their superiors were willing to give them or let them have. This is a common feature of work places where there is no accountability and is not peculiar to the CBC.

At critical times in the development of Barbados, the CBC had a monopoly on the images we saw of ourselves. During those times we saw very little of ourselves on television. Most Barbadians of a certain vintage can still remember Bajan Bus Stop and Bus Yuh Brain, simply because they were the only local entertainment offerings that resonated with them. And they were 20th century productions. What does that story tell us?

When Keeping up With the Jones came to our screens, it was like a breath of fresh air, but that was not a production of the CBC. What it did, though, was to convince us that there were local producers who could entertain us by reflecting us. The absence of Barbadian images on television, therefore, was not due to a lack of ability to produce quality pictures.

Media houses have a tremendous potential to assist the positive development of a country. Television stations are the more powerful among them. But the world is changing fast, and so too is the power of television stations like the CBC. If present trends continue, they may soon be irrelevant to most people. If entertainment is what one is looking for, any computer or cellular phone could provide it. The opportunity of CBC to positively shape our nation may have been lost, and, we are told, an opportunity lost may never be regained.

Many persons were surprised to hear that there were more than 200 employees of the CBC. Some may have been surprised because we never see this volume of humanity when we have any interaction with that corporation. Many more may be surprised because there is no evidence of the production of 200 people on our television or anything else associated with that entity. Too many Barbadians refer to the Asian content of the local station’s programming with disapproval and lament the lack of content which they regard as relevant to them.

It is difficult to understand how the CBC could rack up $100 000 000 in debt, especially when there seems to be no prospect of ever being able to reverse that position. One would be dismayed if no attempt had been made to tackle this state of affairs before, but it has been reported that when the previous administration attempted to deal with this untenable situation, the Barbados Workers Union under the leadership of Toni Moore objected strongly. Further, the workers would have none of it and walked off the job. It seems safe to conclude, therefore, that both the CBC staff and the Barbados Workers Union aided and abetted the destruction of the CBC. Whatever is the fall out now, they should follow the lead of their union boss and welcome it. This was of their own design.

An interesting movie to watch is how the Corporation will improve its programming with half of the staff it had before. With more than 200 staff members, it could not produce any local entertainment content. It would be interesting to see what comes out of there now.

But maybe we have been given a glimpse of what is to come. The promise of issuing more television licences is sure to bring an end to the CBC. This may be the intention at the base of the journey just begun by the new administration.

The journey to the end of CBC may be made shorter by the pledged last in first out approach to firings. The experience so far in a number of departments where the younger workers have been sent home, has not been good. With reduced staff, the persons left behind will have more to do, but chances are if the procedures do not change, efficiency and general productivity will disappear altogether. There would then be no justification for throwing good money after bad and keeping the doors of the CBC open.

The new administration has armed itself with its own propaganda specialists and no longer need the CBC for that role. Social media specialists poisoned the minds of Barbadians against the previous Government and they know how to do it again, hence, it may be good riddance of the CBC.

But the CBC is but a symbol of what is happening across this country at this time. This is the quintessence of the result of collaboration between the weak and the strong. Where the Government, the private sector in a capitalist country, and workers’ organisations enter a joint unholy enterprise, there could only be one result. The workers will lose every time. But the Barbados Workers Union constantly reminds us that where there is no vision the people perish. The only people perishing in Barbados now are the workers.

Think.