BARBADIANS should fix structural and other problems in a timely fashion and avoid knee-jerk reactions” when things go wrong.
Minister of Education Ronald Jones made the suggestion yesterday as he opened a new classroom block at the Parkinson Memorial Secondary School.
Jones complained of the Barbadian tendency to ignore obvious problems until a crisis brought them into sharp relief.
He was commenting on last Friday’s arson attack on a Bridgetown store and the assertion that the six people who died in the blaze would have lived if the store had a back door.
“We recoil now in horror and we’re looking for everybody to blame,” Jones said. “So, we’re blaming architects who constructed the building with one door.
“We’re saying that there need to be more [street] lights, we need more security – and that is a knee-jerk reaction, always in every society.
“We need in Barbados to move away from knee-jerk reactions because what is being said now had to be known before but we all vacillated.”
Jones said people “would not be hearing this conversation [about exits] if those miscreants didn’t throw some accelerant into that one-door building”.
“Barbadians must speak about those things that concern them and “give voice with immediacy,” he suggested. (TY)
