BARBADOS, expecting wealth from a new offshore oil drilling programme, has had a warning from an Anglican priest that such things are usually accompanied by corruption.

"There is a fear that I have to address and look at, and it is when I look at nations where they have prospered significantly, especially from oil, I also see a parallel increase in vulnerability to corruption, and I wonder where we are going as a nation," Reverend Marcus Lashley said yesterday.

Potential wealth

"Yes, God may have blessed us immensely and may be blessing us in new ways. But will we now reuse this additional resource, our potential wealth, to help bring up those who are poor and marginalised?"

He spoke against the backdrop of several oil companies lining up to win a bid to drill for oil off the island.

He made the comments while taking part in Starcom Network's Sunday Brasstacks radio call-in programme, which tackled the issue of why many people were not going to church and how they sought to resolve personal problems
and concerns.

The Anglican cleric voiced concerns about the moral and religious level Barbados had reached, where youths openly
swore at him, at the time wearing clerical robes, for taking a photo of them while they were moving a house on a truck on Palm Sunday.

The priest also conceded he was worried about developments in Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean countries.

He said he was "absolutely concerned" about the respect for law and order and the judicial system and the independence of various bodies in civil society being under attack in Trinidad and Tobago.

When such things happened, "the average person in society has to be extremely concerned", he said.

"I think of how you go into Trinidad, you go to many countries in our region at the moment, and the question is raised as to the integrity of persons," he added. "That is, are persons able to move away from corruption? Are people able to be bought or not? And that's something that's exceptionally worrying."

The majority of callers to the programme said that while they believed in God, they preferred to stay at home rather than go to church because of church-goers' and leaders' lifestyles and other concerns. (TY)