Ministerial Statement by Minister of Labour, Social Security and the Third Sector, Colin E. Jordan, on establishing minimum rates of pay and conditions of work in the accommodation sector.
Mr. Speaker,
For many years since the demise of King Sugar, the Tourism industry has been the mainstay of the Barbados economy. The industry can trace its roots to eighteenth century. Rachel Pringle Polgreen began operating the Royal Navy Hotel in the late 1770’s in Bridgetown. After the railway line was constructed in 1883, Atlantis Inn and Crane Beach Hotel were built and began operating. The modern Tourism Industry can be traced to the visionary leadership of the Barbados Labour Party and its founder, the now Right Excellent Sir Grantley Herbert Adams, and the Hotel Aids Act of 1956.
The industry has employed and continues to employ many people across a broad range of skills. It has earned and continues to earn a significant portion of the country’s foreign exchange. It has facilitated national development, and it has allowed us to share our heritage and way of life with the many persons from across the world who we invite to visit our shores. Because of what I have just said, it is what we refer to as an export industry
Tourism is a people-centred industry with limited scope for mechanization or automation. It is essentially people creating experiences for other people, whether those experiences are in the form of sporting events, are for medical reasons, business meetings, exploring nature, visiting friends and relatives, or for rest and relaxation. As a people industry, it is necessary that those who create the experiences are valued, and that their ideas, their input, their work, their creativity, their labour is valued.
Allow me, Mr. Speaker, to make the following point: Barbados emerged from two hundred years of the most heinous form of enslavement in human history inflicted by the English on Africans and people of African descent.
To read the full Ministerial Statement, you may download it by clicking here.