标签： Barbados

For weeks, communities across St Joseph have struggled with intermittent, unreliable water access that has upended daily life, leaving families scrambling to secure basic supplies even as local leaders and national officials move forward with a landmark $100 million infrastructure overhaul designed to fix the island’s long-standing water woes permanently.

While attending the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. last Thursday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley formalized a $160 million Barbadian dollar (equivalent to US$80 million) financing agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank to fund full modernization of St Joseph’s aging water network. The long-planned project targets the replacement of corroded, decades-old water mains that have been the root cause of repeated supply disruptions across the region.

Despite broad public support for the transformative initiative, affected residents are sounding the alarm that immediate relief remains out of reach for hundreds of households that have gone weeks without consistent running water. Many question how long they will have to endure unsafe, inconvenient conditions before the upgrades deliver tangible change.

Bernard Brown, a long-term resident of Lower Parks, told reporters that his household has gone eight full weeks without proper running water. “I recognize the Prime Minister is working to solve this problem long-term, but right now we need water today,” Brown said. “How many more weeks are we going to go without before anything changes?”

Brown outlined the daily struggles his community faces, noting that water trucks dispatched to fill gaps in service rarely arrive at convenient times. “Sometimes you don’t even see the water trucks during the day; they roll in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep. We have a regional water tank, but it sits at the top of the hill, and we live downhill – nothing ever reaches us.”

Like many residents, Brown pushed back on the requirement to pay full water bills despite receiving no consistent service. “If we could just get water two or three times a week, we could manage – wash clothes, flush toilets, take care of our kids. School starts next week, and people can’t even get their children ready. It’s unfair that we’re still expected to pay for a service we aren’t getting, when we’re already paying out of pocket for alternative laundry or to haul water ourselves,” he said.

Ingrid Knight, a resident of the Dark Hole neighborhood, described her experience as cautiously optimistic about the future project but stressed that current conditions are untenable for her large household. “The proof will be in the pudding – if this project delivers uninterrupted water, we’ll all be the first to celebrate it,” Knight said. For now, though, she added, water only trickles through for a few short hours in the early morning before cutting out again. “Last week, I got up at 3 a.m. when I noticed it was on, filled a few bottles, and by 7 a.m. it was gone again.”

With four children and a grandson living in her home, Knight says she has to make weekly trips to secure water from an outside source. “I have a car, so I pack all my buckets and bottles and drive up to Coconut Grove, where there’s a public standpipe that always runs. Sometimes we even bathe and wash clothes up there before coming back. The water tanker rarely comes – my daughter called multiple times last week, and it only showed up once.”

Residents of upper Parks Road, also known as Saddle Back, report similar struggles, with some going up to three weeks without consistent service and water trucks arriving sporadically with no advance warning. Kimberley Yearwood, a beekeeper and landscaper who has been waiting days with empty buckets and drums for a tanker delivery, shared her experience from last week: “The Water Authority showed up at 11 p.m. By the time the driver got to my house, he only had enough water for four buckets, and all my neighbors down the road got nothing.”

Yearwood added that many residents miss deliveries entirely because the trucks do not sound an alert to notify the community – people have to wait outside constantly just to catch a delivery when it arrives. She also raised public health concerns about a nearby storage tank that is regularly refilled but has unknown maintenance and cleaning schedules. She echoed other residents’ frustration that repair work in upper sections of the community has not translated to improved service for Lower Parks and Fruitful Hill, where outages are most severe.

Another resident, who only gave his name as Blenman, criticized the utility for a lack of backup infrastructure and transparent communication with affected communities. “If one pump breaks down, you have to have a backup system ready to go – there’s just no excuse for leaving people without water for this long,” he said. “It feels like we aren’t even on the map. No one updates us on what’s happening, no one tells us when to expect service back. I don’t think anyone should be paying their water bills right now under these conditions.”

Local Member of Parliament Ryan Brathwaite, who is himself a St Joseph resident affected by the outages, confirmed that he has repeatedly called on the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) to increase the frequency of tanker deliveries to impacted neighborhoods.

In response to public outcry, BWA officials confirmed that they have repaired roughly 40 burst mains, leaks, and faulty hydrants across St Joseph in the first three months of 2024, all stemming from the aging infrastructure the new project will replace. In a late Friday statement, the authority said it is deploying additional field teams to conduct full inspections of affected areas, identify unreported leaks, and restore normal service as quickly as possible. “Field teams continue to actively conduct service checks in the impacted areas to identify the root causes of the decreased levels and supply interruptions. To date, a number of leaks have been detected and repaired,” the statement read.

Barbados’ government announced on Friday two landmark initiatives to elevate student participation in national education policy and public discourse: a permanent headquarters for the National Student Council (NSC) and a new national student-led media platform, both set to launch this September. The announcement came during the official opening of the 2024 NSC election proceedings held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, with Minister of Education Transformation Chad Blackman laying out the government’s vision to turn students from passive observers into active architects of national education development.

Starting in September, the NSC will move into a purpose-built, fully resourced office space within the Ministry of Education Transformation’s headquarters in Bridgetown. The facility will be outfitted with all the administrative hardware and digital technology required for the student body to coordinate national operations, host general meetings, and carry out its governance work independently. Minister Blackman emphasized that the permanent base marks a critical shift away from the historical pattern of ad-hoc student inclusion in policy making, where young voices were only invited to the table when convenient for institutional leaders.

“Student agency means being active contributors to the learning environment, participants in institutional processes, and partners in shaping the future of education in this country,” Blackman told the assembled audience of students, educators, and UNICEF representatives.

Beyond physical infrastructure for the NSC, Blackman revealed plans for “Student TV”, a multi-format national digital platform that will integrate video broadcasting, radio programming, and podcast production. The initiative is designed to create a professional, student-run space to share original news coverage, host national debating competitions, showcase student arts and cultural projects, and report on school sports across the country.

Blackman noted that for too long, young Barbadians have lacked a formal outlet to share their achievements and perspectives with national and global audiences. “From September, Student TV must now be the mouthpiece and articulation of what is happening with our students,” he said. “Imagine students with their branded microphones, engaging stakeholders and telling their stories on global matters like technology, climate, and health.”

The rollout of these initiatives is a core component of the government’s six-year ambition to build one of the world’s top-performing education systems. Blackman stressed that ongoing reforms — including the revision of the national Education Act and the restructuring of the Caribbean Examinations Council framework — cannot be effective without direct input from the students who are the primary beneficiaries of the education system.

“Retooling and reforming what education looks like means giving students a stronger platform and a stronger voice. You are there to shape and reshape the institutions that you must one day lead,” he added.

Friday’s event also kicked off the final phase of competitive NSC executive elections. After a full cycle of online campaigning and preliminary selection rounds, nine candidates remain in the running for the three top leadership positions: president, vice president, and general secretary.

Minister Blackman reminded candidates that their prospective roles serve as a foundational training ground for future public leadership, requiring a deliberate balance of commitment to national student advocacy and maintaining academic excellence. “To whom much is given, much is expected,” he said. “Being on the student council does not mean that you’re exempt from doing your schoolwork. This is the building block for the future. The world expects you to be able to deliver excellence all at the same time.”

Drawing from his own career trajectory, which began in student leadership during secondary school and eventually led to roles as Barbados’ Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and later a cabinet minister, Blackman encouraged the emerging young leaders to embrace meaningful advocacy over superficial gains. Before his current cabinet appointment, Blackman also led the development of the Commonwealth Students Association framework during his tenure at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.

“Long before I was Minister of Economic Affairs or working as an ambassador, I started where you are today,” he told the audience. “Your role is not just about saying ‘I am a member of my school’s student council.’ You do so with the clear objective of being able to articulate your own vision for how you reimagine the development of your world.”

He urged the incoming executive to reject the mindset of treating council roles as mere resume enhancements, urging them to prioritize tangible cultural change and student advocacy. “This is really about changing the culture for the better. Lead with courage, integrity, and purpose,” Blackman said.

The event closed with an official directive for the incoming NSC leadership to launch formal collaborative consultations with the National Parent Teachers Association (NPTA) and private sector non-governmental organizations, with the goal of embedding student perspectives across all levels of national public policy discussion.

As Barbados prepares to welcome the start of the Trinity school term this coming Monday, the country’s Ministry of Education Transformation has announced new steps to safeguard environmental health standards across all school campuses, responding to disruptive incidents earlier this year that forced multiple school closures. Minister of Education Chad Blackman confirmed that a dedicated interdepartmental team has been assembled to draft formal, nationwide protocols that will set binding standards for maintaining clean, safe learning environments, with a full public unveiling of the framework expected in the near future.

The catalyst for this policy push came in March, when six primary and secondary schools across Barbados — St Bartholomew Primary, St Paul’s Primary, Charles F Broome Memorial Primary, Mount Tabor Primary, Christ Church Girls’ School, and Hilda Skeene Primary — experienced serious environmental hazards that upended normal teaching and learning operations. The widespread issues forced some campuses to send students home early, while others were forced to suspend classes entirely for multiple days, prompting outcry from educators and families.

The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) had previously publicly called for a standardized national set of guidelines to address environmental health risks in schools, arguing that consistent rules for routine cleaning, sanitation, regular infrastructure inspections, and preventive maintenance were critical to avoiding repeated disruptions. Minister Blackman, speaking to Barbados TODAY on the sidelines of the Barbados National Student Council’s Elections held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, confirmed the ministry had answered that call, noting that the working group has already made substantial progress on the policy framework.

Beyond updating internal protocols for campus maintenance, Blackman also issued a direct appeal to private businesses and private property owners located adjacent to school grounds, urging them to take greater responsibility for maintaining clean, pest-free surroundings. He emphasized that unkempt adjacent properties — ranging from food retail outlets to parking lots and vacant lots — often create conditions that attract pests such as rodents, which can easily cross onto school property and put student and staff health at risk.

“Our schools have been kept clean. We’ve intensified our cleaning efforts and we’re ramping up even further, but we also want to use this and, as Minister of Education, really plead with our stakeholders outside of the school to keep their facilities clean because it impacts our schools, it impacts learning, it impacts teaching,” Blackman stated.

The minister also offered a formal assurance that all six schools affected by the March environmental incidents have undergone full professional sanitization and remediation work, and are fully prepared to welcome students and staff back for the new term. He added that ministry inspectors have confirmed all remediated campuses meet full health and safety standards, but reiterated that unregulated conditions on adjacent private property remain an ongoing, uncontrollable risk that requires cooperation from local business owners to mitigate.