Education Minister urges Caribbean people and Barbadians don’t be cattle and march blindly
A minister of the Freundel Stuart regime is comparing people of the region, Barbadians inclusive, to cows and other bovines…
Education Minister Ronald Jones was delivering a keynote address for the opening of a workshop from the Association of Caribbean Tertiary Institutes in Hastings recently.
His comments were more redolent of a campaign platform than a seminar on leadership, initially he was responding to how campuses and faculties have endured severe budgetary cuts.
The Barbadian cabinet minister even went so far as to dispute and refute suggestions from members of the public both here and in the Caribbean, who believe the difference in spending cuts was pocketed by parliamentary representatives, a concept which really bridled the parliamentarian;-
Mr Jones then went on to recount to the audience how spending cuts are not in education alone but across the board and sometimes administrations may seek ways to regain from those losses in a manner which the electorate despises.
He says just because one endures temporary hardship is not cause to engage in a mob mentality, the Minister of Education then went on to compare protesters to ruminants in the United States;-
In 1991, Ronald Jones was President of the Barbados Union of Teachers, he was in the vanguard which formed the Coalition of Trade Unions and Staff Associations, which eventually became CTUSAB or the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Assoc’s of Barbados.
At that time, he was a vehement objector and protester to an 8 per cent pay cut on all civil servants including schoolteachers which was introduced by the then Erskine Sandiford regime of the day from the same ruling party as prevails at the moment.
22 years later, as a sitting member of parliament, he advised on the use of force if anyone should choose to object to the introduction of tuition fees at the Cave Hill campus, many Barbadians remain disturbed by those remarks up to this present day.
