Bdos: Welfare produces labor shortage

THE Director of Barbados’ National Insurance and Social Security Scheme (NIS) says that current demographic indicators suggest there will be a serious labour shortage in this country within ten years.

According to him, this will lead to large numbers of non-Barbadians, specifically Guyanese, taking up whatever jobs are available. While recommending that competent persons work beyond current retirement ages, he points to “low wages” as a disincentive for Barbadians to take up certain types of employment.

This is provocative stuff. Nowhere is early retirement more frequently an option than in the public sector which for decades popularised the habit of leaving secure positions at the earliest opportunity and either retiring on pensions or taking up new occupations in the private commercial sector. That way, ex-civil servants enjoy two bites of the economic pie simultaneously.

By contrast, there are considerable numbers of shiftless individuals who choose not to work but to rely on handouts which political expediency as much as social duty provides for them.

The attitude seems to be: Why work when they can go on the dole, their indolent lifestyles funded by the State with cash up to 26 weeks in a year? If the State can introduce costly projects with as yet little sign of them becoming functional any time soon, why not spend similarly on the “poor and dispossessed” as well?