Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle says Barbados’ new digital ID has the potential to be transformative, including solving child maintenance and parental custody issues.
She also saw it as vital for “care economy” opportunities involving women, who she said bore the brunt of job losses triggered by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The minister was speaking this morning during the RF Economic Outlook Virtual Conference 2021.
Caddle called the new digital ID “perhaps one of the most transformational of all”.
“It re-registers the population with a single, digital identity that removes much of the time and nuisance in presenting several times to several Government and business environments in order to get things done,” she noted.
“But it also has tremendous potential applications, for example, in simplifying state-regulated transactions between individuals, such as child maintenance between non-custodial and custodial parents.”
The digital ID issue, and overall digital economy developments, were also relevant for care givers, she added.
“COVID-19 has shown us that the most important economic input is care: children have been at home, carers have been challenged to show up at work; countries like Barbados have as a COVID-19 economic measure invested more in care workers in households and communities,” said Caddle.
“The intersection between this care economy, the fact that much of it is unpaid work done by women, the fact that in economies like Barbados more women than men were separated from their work and the question of how to better support women’s productive capacities has at least part of its answer in the digital economy.” (SC)
