标签： Barbados

The Caribbean public health and advocacy community is mourning the loss of one of its most influential leaders, Tessa Chadderton-Shaw, a long-serving mental health and substance abuse educator who died Sunday at Queen Elizabeth Hospital following a short, unexpected illness.

Chadderton-Shaw leaves behind an unmatched legacy of public service spanning more than three decades, across roles in non-profit leadership, academia, and regional governance. Most notably, she helmed Barbados’ National Council on Substance Abuse (NCSA) for 14 years, serving as the organization’s manager from August 1996 through March 2010, guiding the body through critical expansion of its public education and prevention mandates.

Beyond her transformative work at NCSA, Chadderton-Shaw built a reputation as a dedicated educator and skilled project leader across multiple regional institutions. For over 13 years, she held a lectureship at the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill campus, where she taught courses spanning business administration, project management, and language arts, shaping the careers of hundreds of emerging Caribbean professionals. Her resume also includes senior roles such as special projects coordinator at Barbados Conference Services Limited, project manager for the CARICOM Secretariat, and executive director of the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organization (RADO), demonstrating her versatile ability to drive progress across diverse public sectors.

Current NCSA manager Betty Hunte, who began her career working under Chadderton-Shaw’s leadership, paid heartfelt tribute to her former mentor this week, highlighting her unyielding commitment to public service. Hunte described Chadderton-Shaw’s leadership style as defined by relentless tenacity and unshakable determination, noting that once the trailblazing leader set a goal, no obstacle could stop her from delivering results.

“When something was decided, we knew it would be done come hell or high water,” Hunte recalled, emphasizing that Chadderton-Shaw was the office’s go-to problem-solver, capable of steering even the most complex, high-stakes initiatives to success. One of her most enduring contributions to Barbados public health, Hunte shared, was a 1990s/2000s fundraising campaign to launch a groundbreaking school-based drug education program. Chadderton-Shaw led the drive to raise $250,000 for the initiative, which created a mobile drug education classroom housed in a converted bus that traveled to every primary school across Barbados. The program remains the only one of its kind in the country decades later, reaching generations of young Barbadians with life-saving prevention information.

Hunte also recalled Chadderton-Shaw’s relentless work ethic, noting that staff often received calls from her at all hours of the day and night as she clarified details, refined project documents, and pushed to advance the NCSA’s core mandate to reduce substance abuse across Barbados. Even after her retirement from the council, Chadderton-Shaw remained connected to the organization she built: when NCSA celebrated its 21st anniversary, she joined the festivities to be honored for her foundational contributions, an occasion current staff still cherish.

Chadderton-Shaw is survived by her husband Anthony Shaw and their two daughters, Miah and Haylee. Tributes continue to pour in from across the Caribbean public health and academic communities, honoring a leader whose work transformed substance abuse prevention and education across the region.

As thousands of Barbadian students prepare to sit for a range of critical national and regional exit examinations this assessment cycle, the Group of Concerned Parents of Barbados has extended its solidarity and well-wishes to young test-takers and their families, while pressing for long-overdue reforms to address deep-rooted systemic inequities in the country’s education sector.

The group’s spokesperson and coordinator Paula-Anne Moore extended targeted encouragement to the youngest cohort of examinees, who are currently undertaking the 11-Plus Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination, alongside students completing vocational qualifications, Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) assessments, and students at the Barbados Community College (BCC).

To 11-Plus candidates, Moore extended a message of comfort, urging young people to approach their exams with calm focus and steady confidence. She also acknowledged the intense stress felt by parents and guardians across the country, advising caregivers to avoid transferring their own anxiety to their children during this high-stakes period. Reminding students that their worth extends far beyond a single test score, she emphasized that these assessments represent just one milestone in a lifelong journey, not a final judgment of their potential. “Your success does not depend on these results alone,” Moore said in her message. “Trust that your best effort is enough, and that the best chapter of your story is still ahead of you.”

Beyond extending well-wishes, Moore used the moment of national exam season to shine a light on structural failures that have created unfair barriers for low-income students across Barbados. As the government moves forward with national education transformation initiatives, she argued that resolving systemic inequities must be at the top of the policy agenda. Most notably, she called out the widespread expectation that families must pay for private tutoring — whether for 11-Plus preparation or CXC assessments — to secure strong exam results. This norm, Moore argued, is inherently unjust: it places disproportionate, crippling financial burdens on low-income households and deepens the disadvantages that marginalized students already face. “Privileged families take access to extra support for granted, but our education system should not compound the unfairness that already shapes life for children born into poverty,” she said.

Moore also addressed the proposed transition to digital and hybrid CXC exam formats, noting that the shift to e-testing for multiple-choice Paper 1 sections and hybrid testing for Paper 2 must be paused until full infrastructure readiness is achieved across all Barbadian schools. She said it is unreasonable to push forward with digital testing until every school has sufficient WiFi connectivity, functional devices, and robust IT capacity, and until all students and teachers have completed adequate training to use the new systems. Any rushed transition, she warned, would only create new barriers for under-resourced schools and deepen existing inequities.

Finally, Moore highlighted a key demographic shift that could create an opportunity for targeted education improvement: this year’s 11-Plus cohort is nearly 300 students smaller than the 2024 cohort, a decline that the group attributes to Barbados’ falling national birth rate. If this downward trend continues, Moore said, it will free up unused school capacity that can be reallocated to provide targeted learning support for students who require extra assistance, a shift that would help advance equity across the system.

Closing her statement, Moore reiterated the group’s prayer for all Barbadian students, urging them to approach their exams with confidence and reminding them that the entire community is rooting for their success.

International Workers’ Day, widely known as Labour Day or May Day, serves as more than just a public holiday—it is a global moment of reflection, recognition, and collective solidarity for working people everywhere. Rooted in the historic fight for fair working conditions, the annual observance honors the sacrifices of past generations of organizers, celebrates hard-won progress for workers, and keeps the urgent push for expanded labor rights at the center of public conversation. This year, as the world marks the occasion, the Caribbean nation of Barbados stands out for its decades of incremental, transformative progress in protecting and expanding worker protections.

Over the past century, organized labor in Barbados has secured foundational rights that many workers now consider standard. Early 20th-century struggles delivered the 40-hour workweek and 8-hour workday, landmark gains that reshaped the balance of power between workers and employers. In the decades that followed, the labor movement expanded these wins to include guaranteed minimum wage, paid sick leave, annual vacation leave, maternity leave, and paid study leave. More recently, the nation has added new protections: paternity leave for new parents and unemployment benefits to support workers navigating job loss.

This progress has been codified in a wave of progressive, worker-centered legislation passed over the last 13 years. Key reforms include the 2012 Safety and Health at Work Act and the 2012 Employment Rights Act, which laid out basic protections for all workers. The 2017–2021 Sexual Harassment (Prevention) Act created clear safeguards against workplace abuse, while the 2020 Employment (Prevention of Discrimination) Act banned unfair bias in hiring, promotion, and firing. Most recently, the nation passed the 2025 Family Leave Bill to further expand caregiving protections for workers.

Complementing these legal reforms is the establishment of the Employment Rights Tribunal (ERT) in 2013, a specialized tripartite arbitration body designed to resolve employment disputes—most notably unfair dismissal claims—outside of the overburdened traditional court system. Operating under the voluntary framework that guides modern industrial relations practice, the ERT offers workers and employers a faster, more accessible path to conflict resolution, a win for all parties in the employment relationship.

Barbados has also aligned its national labor standards with global best practices through its commitment to the International Labour Organization (ILO). As of June 2025, the Barbadian government has ratified all 10 of the ILO’s fundamental core conventions. These include the 1930 Forced Labour Convention (No. 29), the 1957 Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No. 105), the 1948 Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (No. 87), and the 1949 Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (No. 98). Most recently, Barbados ratified the 1981 Occupational Safety and Health Convention (No. 155) on June 5, 2025, during the 113th International Labour Conference, alongside the 2006 Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention (No. 187).

A groundbreaking new development for Barbadian workers came with the 2025 passage of the Caribbean Community (Free Movement of Nationals) Bill. The legislation unlocks new opportunities for labor mobility across all CARICOM member states, a fitting step forward given May Day’s deep roots in the Caribbean labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s. From its earliest days, the regional movement centered worker contributions to national development, and today’s milestone serves as a powerful reminder that every right currently enjoyed by Barbadian workers—from the 8-hour workday to anti-discrimination protections—was won through decades of organizing, protest, and collective action by early labor leaders.

Despite these significant gains, shifting global labor market dynamics are creating new, urgent challenges that Barbados’s labor movement and trade unions must address moving forward. Experts emphasize that organizing and engaging younger generations of workers is a top priority to sustain the movement into the future. Trade unions also face growing structural pressures, including declining membership density, prolonged battles over union recognition, the rise of outsourcing and precarious contract work, and the disruptive impact of automation and artificial intelligence on traditional employment. The rapid growth of the gig economy has created a large cohort of workers without access to the basic protections won over the last century, while rising workplace mental health concerns and growing political pushback against collective bargaining have further stretched the labor movement’s capacity.

This analysis comes from Dennis De Peiza, Labour Relations & Employment Relations Consultant at Regional Management Services Inc.

A major cross-district drug and arms trafficking crackdown has led four suspects to make their first court appearance in Barbados following one of the more significant narcotics seizures in recent local memory. On Saturday, the four accused — identified as 23-year-old Kyle Xavier Bailey from Claybury, St John; 34-year-old Jamal Tyrone Agard from Philips Road, Cleavers Hill, St Joseph; 26-year-old Marlon Dale Romario Reid, also of Claybury, St John; and 23-year-old Dashon Kobi Inniss from Branchbury, St Joseph — appeared before Magistrate Alison Burke at the District ‘A’ Traffic Court.

All charges stem from alleged criminal activity that took place on April 25. The four men face a joint slate of offences: possession of cannabis, possession of cannabis with intent to supply, trafficking of cannabis, illegal possession of three firearms, and possession of 12 rounds of ammunition. Reid faces an additional two separate charges, carrying one more unregistered firearm and 17 extra rounds of ammunition that were not included in the joint count.

Law enforcement officials confirmed that the total weight of the seized suspected cannabis clocks in at 499.15 kilogrammes, just under the half-tonne mark. When calculated at current street prices, the haul is estimated to be worth approximately $3,494,050 Barbadian dollars.

Under Barbados’ criminal procedure rules, the accused were not required to enter a plea at this initial hearing because the offences are indictable, meaning they will proceed to a higher court for trial following preliminary hearings. All four men have been remanded into the custody of the Barbados Prison Service at Dodds Prison. The case has been transferred to the District ‘F’/Belleplaine Court, with the next procedural hearing scheduled for May 18, 2026.