BARBADIANS need to spend more time trying to fix problems, rather than complaining.

This is the message from president of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dick Stoute.

". . . I have discovered that complaints do not do any good," Stoute said when the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers' (BAPE) held its annual dinner at Hilton Barbados recently.

"They don't correct anything, and they actually make things worse as they get people upset, engender a negative attitude and seed further complaints.

"Complaints generate more complaints and create a negative social attitude, which makes it difficult to get anything done."

The thrust of Stoute's address was re-engineering society to make it more productive, and to reduce the problems it faced.

He spoke of the need for "trying to fix things" instead of putting efforts into "passing the blame onto others".

"If Barbados could be improved by complaints, it would be the most developed country in the world, but it isn't," he told the engineers.

". . . Obviously, if we want to fix the problems in our society we need a different approach. This is where our engineering training becomes useful.

"We are taught how to solve problems and we need to apply that skill to the social problems that we are living with. We are in the best position to offer solutions and our society is in dire need of our expertise." (TY)