Barbados’ Prime Minister, the Hon. Mia Amor Mottley.
By Marsha Gittens
Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has announced a major reshuffling of Cabinet with two new persons being given ministerial portfolios and four former Cabinet members being removed.
Barbados’ leader also reduced the number of parliamentary secretaries by one.
The change comes two years and two months after the Mottley-led Barbados Labour Party won the 2018 General Elections.
Addressing the nation from Ilaro Court on Wednesday (July 22), Mottley said the restructuring of Cabinet came at a time when “the government itself is readying and repositioning itself” for the challenges that will confront it in “a post-COVD-19 Barbados”. In addition, the new Cabinet will also be ready “for those [challenges] that we anticipate will present themselves in the coming months and years”.
Mottley said on Wednesday she informed Barbados’ Governor General, Dame Sandra Mason, of her decision to “take fresh guard”. She stated the Parliament of Barbados will be prorogued on August 8, 2020. It will resume in a new session on September 15, 2020. On this date, Parliament will resume “with a new throne speech and with a new direction” as to where the government “must go in order to meet these extraordinary, different circumstances from the original throne speech of two years ago”.
The new Cabinet comprises: William Duguid - the Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance; Kerrie Symmonds - the Minister of Energy, Small Business and Entrepreneurship; Adrian Forde - the Minister of the Environment and National Beautification; Wilfred Abrahams - the Minister of Home Affairs, Information and Public Affairs; Charles Griffith - the Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources; Dwight Sutherland - the Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment; Peter Philips - the Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and John King - the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Sharing more on the latter change, the Prime Minister said that Culture is “coming to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Rural Development Commission, with an intention that as we know, the Rural Development Commission and the Urban Development Commission moving to become a National Development Commission and bringing both of those entities together as one as we have discussed previously”.
The new additions to the Cabinet are Senator Lisa Cummins, who is now the Minister of Tourism and International Transport, and Ian Gooding-Edghill, who is now Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources.
All other Ministers will remain in their previous posts with unchanged portfolios.
The Prime Minister acknowledged and thanked Members of Parliament George Payne, Trevor Prescod, Edmund Hinkson and Neil Rowe, in addition to Senator Lucille Moe, for the work they have done in the past two years.
She said their removal “is not a case of dismissing anyone. I want to make it clear that I am committed to ensuring that each former member of the Cabinet is utilised in this country in a manner or in the furtherance of the work of this government and of this nation. They are all capable individuals who have much to offer Barbados and I will be leaning on them with their permission in some form or fashion to assist with the execution of our mandate to be effective as a government and to ensure that our resolve to remain the political party of choice in Barbados is carried through”.