BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – “Welcome to the new present…one in which the public sector can no longer absorb the majority of school leavers or graduates.”
This statement is one of the many remarks made at an awards dinner in Barbados on Saturday (Apr. 2) by Senior Minister Dr. the Hon Timothy Harris to 14 nationals of the Federation who graduated from the University of the West Indies.
Dr. Harris told the graduates that it must be a new future of the young and not so young displaying initiative, innovation, savvy and entrepreneurial zeal to find new areas of engagement in a life-long pursuit of happiness.
“You the young will grapple with the challenges that small and medium entities must deal with in the lack of venture capital, lack of IT applications and a culture of limited support for local entities et cetera. But you, our graduands, are better prepared…you are better trained to take advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably pass your way. The absence of managerial talent will not be an issue for you,” the Senior Minister told the gathering.
Minister Harris also posed a number of questions to the graduates during his speech, which, according to him, “were food for thought”.
“So are you ready to survive through your creativity and ingenuity? Can you lift yourselves up by your own bootstraps? Will your future be one of staying at home day dreaming until a job vacancy comes at TDC, S.L. Horsfords, National Bank or with the government? Is there anything from your years at this university that will spur some of you to work together in partnership, or otherwise to create a world of opportunities for your good selves?” he asked.
Touching on politics, Dr. Harris noted that as one looks to the future, some of the graduates would no doubt become activists and leaders of political parties.
“What will our future governance be under your leadership or with you being part of the government? Will you allow the status quo to remain or will you take it to a higher level of democracy, typified by debates about ideas, principles and vision, rather than personalities? Will you democratise your parties making them more accessible to a broader cross section of people? Will you ensure that the power lies with the party membership and not with maximum leaders as obtained in the old Egypt, old Tunisia, old China and some places in our Caribbean? Will you be agents of change like the young university students, who in the 2008 United States Presidential Race helped ushered in the first black president in the history of America and who recently changed government in Egypt?
“We need to build more inclusive societies and productive societies and create the platforms for wealth generation by the mass of our society. This is important because our society, in the past, was a society of inequity, deprivation, displacement, poverty and discrimination on account of class, colour, race and status,” Dr. Harris said.
The theme for the night’s auspicious event was ‘Acknowledging the Present as the Gateway to the Future’.
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