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Prime Minister’s Statement To The Nation

Good evening, everyone. Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to do something that I don’t normally do. I wrote down my thoughts that I wanted to share with you today.

In this conversation, I do not want in any way for any word to be misplaced or indeed for anything to be omitted. I have already spoken to you about the role that law enforcement in this country must play in curbing the surge of violence, about the additional resources and approaches taken by the Police Service and about the legislative changes that we must bring to increase the efficiency of our court systems and indeed to modernise our criminal justice system which is caught in a 19th/20th century position.

We will continue to speak to you on these issues as we must.

But today my friends, this is a conversation with Bajans and all who live here and who love our country as if it were their own. This country of ours is great because when it has mattered most, we have always come together to confront and rise above challenges. We have done so throughout our history and certainly in my time as leader.

We’ve saved our way of life by saving our dollar and we’ve saved lives and livelihoods as we fought to overcome the personal and societal dread of COVID-19. We have grown stronger to fight this new reality of ours, this climate crisis, and we will continue to work together to become even more resilient because we’re not where we need to be to fight that battle.

But my friends, we must now come together again to confront the tendency towards violence in this country, a violence driven by anger very often and the inability or unwillingness to resolve conflicts peacefully.

We face the scourge of greed and gangs fighting for dominance and territory and we’re seeing a rising incidence equally of mental and physical abuse. The mental health challenges have been compounded especially since COVID brought the restrictions on movement and individual choices. You remember indeed from the same room I addressed you many times.

These matters are made worse by other issues that we must consciously control as leaders wherever we are; whether as parents or guardians and godparents or indeed extended family or neighbours, friends, employers, members of the community, sporting or cultural groups in which we interact. And we must do so whether in our homes, our place of work, our businesses, and indeed we must do so where we worship, in our churches, our mosques, our temples, wherever we go for religious or spiritual worship. We must immediately address the absence of religious and moral grounding of our children.

We have talked about it for too long without serious progress. We must teach them and they must learn the basic difference between right and wrong and the need to respect human life, their own lives, and indeed that of others. We need to control the inappropriate use of social media to circulate memes that hurl insults or share videos that denigrate groups like young women, young girls, or promote the attraction of guns or indeed the sending of direct messages to issue threats and to deliberately generate fake news, news that we know to be fake.

We must monitor and balance the excessive screen time and exposure to violent content. This nation’s children are being desensitised to violence through the non-stop playing of video games and the overuse and misuse of social media through the cartoons that they’re watching in some instances. It is interesting that it is called social media as it quite often leads to anti-social behaviour and this is now being recognised the world over.

This overexposure desensitises not only the children but indeed some of the parents to the presence of guns and killing. Our children, my friends, are spending hours on these devices, pausing only to eat and to drink and returning to the games where they have been killed multiple times for the day already.

And they’re still playing and after a while what happens? Killing means nothing to them. Everything on social media is a trend and unfortunately we have seen gun violence trend not only here but globally reminding us of the fragile nature of our peace.

Zero tolerance for guns and drug abuse must not only be engaged and articulated by law enforcement, but across our society; in our institutions, in our homes and indeed yes on our blocks. You know, Judge Judy has a saying that if a song’s too good to be true, it is normally not true.

If the bulging pocket in your son or your grandson’s or granddaughter’s or your best friend’s pocket looks like a gun, is shaped like a gun, it bulges like a gun, my friends it is most likely a gun.

By closing our eyes and remaining silent we are indirectly authorising its indiscriminate and unlawful use. This is a stage at which as parents, as guardians, as godparents, as teachers, as brethren and sistren on a block, we need to say to each other this is not the right way to go. It will not, this will not have any happy ending. Get rid of it.

And if you don’t trust them to get rid of the guns then ask them to hand it to you and you give it to your pastor if you don’t want to surrender it to the police. We must find a way to reduce the number of guns in this society even as the police do their job and the customs and others do their job to restrict their entry into Barbados. (PR/GIS)

Government

Barbados Statistical Service Statement On Data Breach

The Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) confirms that we recently experienced a cyber incident. Ongoing investigations suggest that the systems of the BSS were breached on October 30, 2024, and that data was obtained by malicious actors. The Data Commissioner was advised.

Within 24 hours of the intrusion into the systems of the BSS, an incident response team was mobilised and deployed by the relevant Authority to contain the incident and investigate the scope of the breach along with BSS IT staff.

The incident has been contained, systems taken offline, and the investigations, so far, reveal that most of the information involved in this incident relates to survey data gathered primarily for statistical research purposes and then aggregated. The teams are still in the early stages of their investigations and are currently in the process of restoring data and services from secured backups.

The BSS is cognisant of its obligation to preserve public trust in the very important work of this Department. We will over the coming days and weeks ensure that our systems are appropriately hardened to reduce the probability of a recurrence and will be coming back to the public to advise on any relevant action that should be taken at the individual level to stay safe online following this event. As more information becomes available, we will provide updates to the public. (PR/GIS)

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Government

Finance Ministry Approves $30 Million In Tax Payments

The Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs, and Investment announced that it recently released funds enabling the Barbados Revenue Authority (the Authority) to issue $30.4 million in Personal Income Tax (PIT) refunds for income year 2023 to 39,196 taxpayers.  Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Ryan Straughn confirmed the announcement.

Minister Straughn praised the Authority’s efforts in maintaining a streamlined process that facilitates the prompt issuance of refunds.

“The majority of refund payments for income year 2023 have been issued electronically via direct deposit and eligible taxpayers will start seeing the amounts on the account of their selected financial institution from as early as this week. This process reaffirms the Government’s ongoing commitment to improve its operations and to deliver efficient service to citizens,” stated Minister Straughn.

“Just under 13 percent of the refund payments processed are being issued via cheque. The cheque payment process has more layers, is a manual process and takes a longer time to process in relation to the disbursement of the payments. So persons will start receiving refund cheques through the post from the latter part of the month.”

Minister Straughn emphasised that the prompt issuance of PIT refunds aligns with Government’s commitment to a robust, citizen-centric service framework. 

“The timely execution of these payments reflects our dedication to supporting taxpayers and delivering on our promises to make government services more accessible and responsive. The Barbados Revenue Authority continues to make strides in improving operational efficiency and service delivery,” he added. (PR/GIS)

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Government

Barbados Has New Resident High Commissioner To Ghana

Last Thursday, November 7, Barbados’ first resident High Commissioner of Barbados to Ghana, Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, presented her Letters of Credentials to the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at Jubilee House, Accra, Ghana.

This occasion marked a significant milestone between the two nations, which started formal diplomatic relations in August, 1994.

High Commissioner Bynoe-Sutherland in addressing the dignitaries gathered, brought greetings on behalf of President of Barbados, Her Excellency, The Most Honourable Dame Sandra Mason, and the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley.

She thanked President Akufo-Addo for his inspirational words to Barbados at National Heroes Square, during the ceremony marking Barbados becoming a Republic in November, 2021.

In her remarks, High Commissioner Bynoe-Sutherland also focused on the ways in which the Atlantic Bridge was being rekindled through areas of cooperation in culture, trade and commerce, agriculture, life sciences and sports.

Having led the national hospital through COVID 19, the High Commissioner highlighted the successful cooperation in health between the two countries since 2019, which she said now serves as a model. 

She shared insights into the positive contributions of the first two cohorts of Ghanaian nurses and the programme underway to welcome and orient the recently arrived third cohort of 155 nurses on November 3, 2024.

President Akufo-Addo in response, spoke about the deep enduring relationship between the countries. He asked that special greetings be sent to Prime Minister Mottley for her support and leadership during Ghana’s efforts around its candidacy for Commonwealth Secretary General.

As Barbados assumes from Ghana the Chairmanship of the Climate Vulnerability Forum (V20), cooperation is expected to deepen between the countries on climate vulnerability and efforts to achieve reform of the international financial institutions captured by the Bridgetown Initiative 3.0.

Senior officials of the Government of Ghana and the Barbados High Commission, along with the High Commissioner’s son, celebrated the occasion.

Also in attendance for the presentation of credentials was Ghana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayokor Bocheway, who was successfully elected as the incoming Seventh Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, and who also joined in well-wishes to the High Commissioner and Barbados. 

The new High Commissioner extended appreciation for the warm welcome received by the Mission in Ghana which was established in 2021. (PR/GIS)

Caption: Barbados’ first resident High Commissioner to Ghana, Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland greets Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at Jubilee House, Accra, Ghana. 

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