Bdos: U.S. travel advisory wrong on Barbados

“We made a mistake.”

That was the response from Consul General of the United States (US) Embassy, Robert Fretz at a press conference yesterday, where he announced that the Consular Information Sheet on Barbados, which called the effectiveness of the Royal Barbados Police Force (RBPF) into question had been pulled from the US State Department’s website. “Nobody was more surprised than we were to find out what was written in a Consular Information Sheet concerning travel safety to Barbados. It has been removed, it is blank and at the moment we are working on a new one, we believe that the crime information that had been posted on the State Department website was inaccurate,” he told the press conference.

The data contained in the information sheet, he contended, did not reflect the opinion of the Embassy with respect to the crime situation in Barbados.

He added: “We apologise for this incident it was done without our knowledge, we have no idea how it happened. We recognise that the Government of Barbados and in particular the new Commissioner of Police, Darwin Dottin have made great strides in combating crime in Barbados, we believe that Barbados is essentially a safe place for Americans to live and to visit.”