A GUY'S VIEW

These days in Barbados there is never a dull moment. Our media no longer has to manufacture fake news. Now, some media entities are choosing not to report legitimate news, maybe because reportable events do not accord with their political interests.

The students of the Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School have been demonstrating all week, raising awareness of their plight in relation to the inadequacy of the arrangements for their dietary sustenance. This is a highly unusual event in Barbados, for it is not the way our children usually behave.
When our children are behaving badly, they fight. Those who may wish to describe these students’ protest as misbehaviour would have to look past their cause and ignore their courage and age appropriate idealism. None of them may ever have identified with a cause to benefit others before, but they now stand together in furtherance of their own interest.

Except where they are marshalled by their unions or their employers, Barbadians almost never stand up publicly as a group for anything. They confine their public conscience to sniping on radio call-in programmes where there is largely anonymity, no accountability and no price to pay. These children are certainly not taking a leaf out of their parents’ book.

Of interest is the complete absence of any public parental support for their children. One would think that if children are remaining hungry all day because they cannot afford food and are prevented from accessing an alternative, the parents of those children would be extremely concerned for their children’s well-being. But not a word. As far as I am aware, save one innocuous comment, no parent has spoken to the media about the state of affairs of which their children are complaining. This silence is highly curious.

This student demonstration, along with mayhem which is being visited upon workers, especially in the public sector, is the most newsworthy event which has taken place in Barbados over the last week, and yet some media houses have chosen to pretend that it never happened. I am told that multiple calls were made to the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in an effort to have them highlight the students’ situation. It was apparently hoped that this attention and a clear public explanation of the situation would help to resolve this matter in the shortest possible time. That “news” organisation chose to ignore those calls.

For years the CBC has been labelled as the political mouthpiece of the ruling administration. The refusal to shape that entity in its image during the last ten years made it impossible for the last administration to benefit from this practice. The new Government has wasted no time to ensure that there is no doubt that the CBC will be nothing more than one voice in its choir.

The Grantley Adams students claimed that the new operators of the canteen cannot cook, are unhygienic and are charging too much for what they provide. Is this true? If it is, what message is sent to this country?

As I understand it, the food offered by school canteens are not too fancy and would not require the most advanced culinary skills. Chicken and chips, hamburgers, pizza and the like should not cause any preparer of food to be accused of not being able to cook. If the food is below standard it may be due to other factors.

It is indeed the case that many schools in Barbados have lunch-time challenges. Students from many schools have at one time or another complained that the canteen staff is too slow. One hour is allotted for lunch and it is a tremendous challenge to feed the entire school population in that time period and have them ready to resume class.

A school like Grantley Adams would have a student roll of about 750, give or take a score or so. A new canteen operator with only political experience would struggle to feed these in one hour. When it becomes necessary to change the canteen operator with the victor in elections rather than provide a caterer with experience in feeding a student army in quick time, schools will stumble from problem to problem.

Vendors have saved many a school from the fate that the Grantley Adams students are now highlighting. Despite being uncontrolled, these vendors take a lot of pressure off of the canteen operation. When the canteen operator wants one hundred per cent of the school business, the system breaks down.

Vendors may present other issues. The food and snacks they provide are not usually what any dietician would recommend for healthy eating. They also take no responsibility for the eventuality of something going wrong with a student who may be negatively affected by the food they provide. But this is the kind of argument that is made to stifle vending. Introducing rules that are not grounded in correcting a mischief usually do more harm than good.

The cost of lunch is one of the issues the students highlighted. It has been reported that a decent lunch costs about $16.00. If a student buys lunch each day of the week, the parent of that child is looking at $80.00 per week. For one child. I suspect that not many parents can afford this expenditure over a school term.

Where there is a combination of food being too expensive, unremarkable taste and poor service, a cheap vendor is a necessary alternative. To cut off this escape route to survival is unfortunate. The school Board and the Principal may be doing the students a disservice by forcing them into an untenable situation.

But this school scenario is symptomatic of our broken society at this time. When people declare that Barbados is not just an economy but a society, this seems to go over the heads of some of us. The scene that is being played out at Grantley Adams is an open display of the callousness of administrators with no compassion and a total disregard for the welfare of Barbadians who are not at the top of the heap.

Our economy is in need of repair, but even if we manage to fix it, how does that benefit the Barbadians whose lives are being sacrificed in the process? That the International Monetary Fund is happy with the numbers on our balance sheet is of no moment to the clerk who no longer has a job and is the single mother of the student of Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School who cannot afford to buy lunch.

Think.