It is time for Barbados to wean itself off its dependence on tourism and develop other industries.
This is the view of President of the Democratic Labour Party, Verla De Peiza, as she delivered a lecture during the Errol Barrow Memorial Lecture and Mirror Image Awards Ceremony, which took place recently.
She expressed that she believed that the current model of tourism militates against our national development and added the increase of all inclusive model hotels meant that tourists were less inclined to spend once arriving on island.
“The explosion of beach chairs and umbrellas forces local sea-bathers literally to the water’s edge and breeds resentment and fosters confrontation. Tourism has become someone else’s business and is ripe for redress,” she said.
“It is time to take a serious look at the prominent position given to tourism in our revenue-generating arsenal and soberly evaluate whether it makes sense to place so many of our eggs in that one fickle basket. Should we not learn the lesson this time around and look to build out other industries? Particularly those which permit greater meaningful participation by a sizeable portion of our people instead of a select few?”
One industry that she believes could prove beneficial to Barbados is the garbage industry, stating that there were many possibilities of revenue generation from garbage.
She stressed that garbage management was more than the sourcing of trucks for collection.
De Peiza believes it is time to start thinking about what to do with garbage after collection and seriously consider the implementation of waste-to-energy drives on a national level.
She pointed out that Sweden is a stellar example of such as only one per cent of its garbage goes to the landfill, as much of its garbage is composted and recycled with the remainder being burned to produce electricity or used in road construction.
She went on to note that she also believes that agriculture has the potential to transform Barbados, adding that technology has the ability to play a vital role since Barbados could be considered a land-scarce country.
“The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has long recognised the role that agriculture plays in reducing poverty and redistributing wealth,” she said.
“When we eat what we grow, we reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases while lowering our food import bill and create job opportunities for people within Barbados.”(CJB)
