Dr. Kenneth George. Photo by George Alleyne
Caribbean L 12 ife, Feb. 22–28, 2019 BQ
PATIENTS’
CHOICE
RATED & AWARDED BY PATIENTS
SM
By George Alleyne
Barbadians are not making
many children and officials
believe it is pushing the island
to a crisis of labour, reducing
not only the local workforce
but also putting at risk the
pensions for those who have
retired.
The problem is that the birth
rate in Barbados has dropped
sharply giving rise to a knockon
effect that will see a lower
number of persons of working
age than the number of those
past retirement.
This means that sometime
soon there will not be enough
Barbadians to fill job positions,
which in turn means fewer persons
will be paying, through
work deductions, into the collective
pensions programme,
the National Insurance Scheme
(NIS), that is responsible for
disbursement of old-age benefits
to most Bajans thereby
threatening their retirement
life.T
he NIS, applied by governments
across the Englishspeaking
Caribbean, is a programme
of compulsory payments
by workers and their
employers. It covers a range
of payment benefits from sickness,
accident, disability to
pensions and cost of funeral.
But in a legal pyramid-like system,
it is dependent on the
continuous input of payments
of those within the working
age to ensure the flow of benefits
to those who have already
contributed and passed the age
of retirement.
“As Barbados continues to
develop its aspirational goals
it is necessary to ensure that
there is a workforce that can
carry the country forward.
Declining birth rates, coupled
with an ageing population, will
have a significant impact on
our ability to project for the
future requirements of national
development,” Chief Medical
Officer, Dr. Kenneth George
has said.
“In 2007, there were 3258
births recorded, and within 10
years this dropped to 2346, a 15
percent decline.”
George said the reduction in
new Bajan babies is caused by a
combination of falling fertility
rates, declining birth rates and
universal access to contraception.
He said government is moving
towards an action plan to
halt the downward slide in the
Barbadian birth rate
“I have, therefore, requested
that the Ministry of Health
and Wellness start a national
dialogue on this important
issue that must involve a multi
sectoral approach including
agencies such as Youth and
Community Empowerment,
Finance and Economic Affairs,
National Insurance, Welfare
and People Empowerment and
Elder Affairs, so as to find a
national solution,” he said.
The alarm bells being sounded
now harks back to remarks
six years ago by a former education
minister, Ronald Jones,
who bluntly said Barbadians
should make more babies.
He said an accelerated babymaking
initiative would, “make
sense of the programmes we
are looking to develop in Barbados:
more people paying
taxes, more people eating our
agricultural produce and utilising
our manufactured goods
and services.”
“Over the next 10 years we
have to change the size of this
population. We can comfortably
go to 325, 000 and people
could still live comfortably in
the space they have.”
Barbados has an estimated
population hovering on
280,000.
“Barbados needs a slightly
bigger population,” Jones had
said, adding, “if it can’t be reproduced
in Barbados — because
the Barbados Family Planning
Association (BFPA) has overdone
its job — then we must
open our doors and invite a
careful selection of those who
can deliver children and within
a certain age range.”
Bajan childbirth rate crisis