Medical transcription business collapse raises questions

UPDATED: April 18, 2012  (Pinned at top. Scroll down for newer content)

We’ve heard some conflicting rumours that the lawsuit against Robert Harvey is 1/ “About to be launched” or 2/ “languishing and won’t be going forward.”

Two years after the collapse, one would think that if a lawsuit was going to happen it would have happened by now. Can any of our readers assist? Has anyone heard anything more?

UPDATED: September 14, 2011

Lawyer contacts Barbados Free Press about potential lawsuit

Barbados Free Press today received an email from a lawyer asking for further details on this story in preparation for a potential lawsuit against Robert Harvey and some companies.

Would the lawyer please contact BFP through your regular email (not from your mobile device) so we know it’s really you.

Thanks! (barbadosfreepress AT yahoo.com)

Invest Barbados spins the story to save face

Last week Robert Harvey, the president of Transcription Relief Services (TSRi), quietly flew into Barbados from the USA, fired his remaining 24 employees and shut down the joint private-government business that launched only 18 months ago.

Today, Invest Barbados CEO Wayne Kirton (photo left) says that the project is “on hold” and will be revived when the demand for medical transcription (MT) services returns. According to Mr. Kirton the failure is all about “the recession”, low demand for the service and nothing else.

Barbados Free Press believes that Invest Barbados is in damage control mode. We’ve discovered there is much more to the story – much more.

What really happened?

According to our research, the medical transcription industry is still thriving worldwide, never mind the recession. Mr. Harvey and many others are still doing well in the MT business: just not in Barbados.

We suspect that the project’s failure in Barbados was less about the world economy and more about whether the MT industry was a good fit for our country in the first place.

Pressure Cooker

Spend a few minutes online and you’ll discover that the medical transcription working environment is a competitive, deadline-driven pressure cooker with a high turnover of newer employees. It’s a demanding job that takes special skills – and even if people have the skills, many folks try it and leave the industry because it’s not for them.

That puts a small country like Barbados at a disadvantage in the international MT marketplace. Compared with our English speaking friends in the UK, Canada and the USA, we simply don’t have the population base to produce high numbers of acceptable candidates willing to commit to a career in MT. Now compare Barbados with India – a leader in the medical transcription industry. Barbados has a population of three hundred thousand on a good day – India has over a billion people.

And those Indians are willing to work for far less money than your average Bajan.

After looking at everything, we don’t believe that a small island nation can compete in this type of industry by paying hourly wages. Trained Barbadian individuals might find online piece work, but at what price?

Why did we believe medical transcription was right for Barbados and Bajans? Why did we think that we could compete in the MT industry with the USA and India? What did we base our decisions on? (And don’t be going on about our quality of work compared with India. Continue reading this article and you’ll see why.)

Ignore the truth: make the same mistakes again

While we understand the political and business reasons that now cause Invest Barbados to spin the story, the danger is that Bajans and our government will again learn nothing from tax dollars thrown away. How many failures of government business schemes does it take before we stop and examine what we might be doing wrong in selecting projects and in their planning and execution?

Or perhaps we at BFP are doing the old “20-20 hindsight” criticism?

Maybe we Bajans had give it a go – just to see if we could make medical transcription work for us and no one had any idea it wasn’t a good fit. God knows we have to try and do more than sell our land to tourists, but now that one of two Bajan medical transcription businesses collapsed, let’s not delude ourselves by blaming the world economy if there are other factors in play.

The usual wild enthusiasm at the start

According to the papers, the Barbados government put “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into training and establishing the venture that opened only 18 months ago.

At the official opening of the business in January 2009, Prime Minister Thompson declared that Barbados was poised to become “the medical transcription capital of the Caribbean” with projected annual gross foreign revenues of $21 million plus. In January 2009 Barbados had 112 graduates of the training programme employed with two companies and another 250 being trained.

The government put out a press release at the time that predicted continued worldwide growth in the medical transcription industry and a bright future for Barbados. PM Thompson pointed out that in Asia, the industry currently had a workforce of 10,000 and there were plans afoot to increase it to 32,000 in the next year.

According to what we find online, the PM’s comments as to the growth of the industry are still generally valid. India continues to do well and is still expanding its medical transcription industry with hundreds of companies registered in the sector. The Philippines is another big centre for the industry, and even the USA has thousands of MT professionals who work online from their home offices.

“So if the MT industry is thriving worldwide, what happened in Barbados?”

Medical transcription: Accuracy & delivery time are everything

Research the medical transcription industry from any perspective (history, training, client needs, business viability factors – anything) and you’ll see that accuracy and quick turnaround are the primary reasons for success or failure of any MT business. Competitive pricing means nothing without the 99% accuracy and a 24 hour turnaround that are the baseline performance standards of the industry.

Outsourcing medical transcription to India went through some tough times six to ten years ago when competition pushed rates from US 12 cents a line down to US 2 cents a line. (!) When the price wars happened the quality of product tanked and the US and UK based client companies went in search of better quality workers closer to home: like here in Barbados.

The Indians learned though. It took a few years to purge their MT industry of the image of low price/low quality bottom feeders, but India came back with an emphasis on quality that is winning over new and old clients… and don’t forget they have a billion people who generally work for much less than we do.

How did Barbados do in meeting the industry standards for accuracy and response time?

Generally, not so good. Consider this excerpt from an October 2009 Nation article…

“THE MAJORITY of Barbadian workers who underwent one year of Government-sponsored training in the medical transcription field, were put on the breadline because they were performing below the required standard of work.

So said Robert Harvey, director of the United States based company TRSi, which trained the workers and set up a local company here.

A year after the company set up business here, 60 of the less than 100 workers have either left the company, or were dismissed.”

… from The Nation article “Workers fail to meet standard” (full article below)

The Nation article didn’t say what happened to the additional 250 people the PM told us were “in training” in January of 2009.

What about ACR Group, the last remaining Bajan Medical Transcription company?

The Bajan news media is carrying a few quotes that Invest Barbados “is exploring” whether or not ACR Group will be able to employ some of the former TSRi employees. We wonder whether ACR Group retained its government subsidies after they were removed from Mr. Harvey’s company and whether ACR Group’s MT business is viable without those subsidies. Time will tell, but maybe our government and the news media won’t!

Is it HIS fault?

For those who think that Barbados somehow got plucked like a chicken by some fast-talking American named Robert Harvey (photo above), we’d invite you to have a look around the internet before you start talking foolishness. See what others say about Mr. Harvey and you’ll find that he is a hard-working, well-respected professional who has proven himself successful in the MT and dictation industries for decades. He and his family took their business from a kitchen table into a US$8 million dollar a year company. When Mr. Harvey sold his business it was for US$4 million cash plus.

We at Barbados Free Press figure that if anyone could have made a go of medical transcription in Barbados, Robert Harvey would have been that person. So we’ll not be blaming Mr. Harvey that things didn’t work out for him or us ‘pon de rock.

When he shut down the company Mr. Harvey told his employees that “…because of a lack of funding and that Government was unwilling to provide finance to the company, he was unable to continue operating the business here.”

In other words, without government subsidisation, Mr. Harvey couldn’t make medical transcription profitable in Barbados. And like we said, if Robert Harvey couldn’t make a go of MT in Barbados, who can?

What we would like to know is what the business arrangements were between the BLP and then DLP governments and Mr. Harvey and how much this little venture really cost us.

We’d also like our leaders to be honest with themselves and with Bajans about our strengths and resources and what types of new businesses will do best in our country.

We’re not saying that we shouldn’t try new things but neither can we say “That looks good” and throw a million dollars at a joint venture without doing our homework and being brutally honest about how we are going to make something succeed. Did we try to train ten people first and see if they could succeed in MT… and then ramp up from there? Nope… our leaders just threw a ton of our money at an idea and now it’s gone with no appreciable benefit.

Same old, same old ’bout hey.

Further Reading

Barbados Advocate On Hold

Nation News, July 18, 2010 Jobs Gone

TRSi Institute CEO Bob Harvey

Invest Barbados Medical Transcription webpage

Caribbean Net News, Jan. 28, 2009 – Barbados repositions into medical transcription

Barbados Govt Press Release: Barbados looks to become Medical Transcription Capital

Acusis India – Home based Medical Transcription

Business Barbados ACR Group Profile (ACR Group is the remaining Bajan MT company)

37 Comments

Filed under Barbados, Business & Banking, Offshore Investments

37 responses to “Medical transcription business collapse raises questions

  1. Peltdownman

    I am not in the least bit surprised. It was obvious from the time that this business was mooted that it would eventually succomb to cheaper labour overseas. You don’t want to blame Harvey, but he was lining his pockets with taxpayers’ money knowing full well that he would pull out once the gravy train ground to a halt. Good for him, right? But from the Barbados point of view, this appears to have treated as an employment “quick fix” that only requred a little homework to establish that it could never fly. Meanwhile, funding that is urgently needed by LOCAL investors and entrepreneurs is still not easily available. It has always been so!

  2. 88/98

    that was great. I really learned alot, I dunno. What is the answer to our stupidity? Why can’t we make anything work on this island? Big or small there isnt’ one real success story I can name when the government gets involved in business.

  3. wonuv d twinteefore

    All I have to say is….really nobody from TRSi is going to go work with ACR, because the reality of it is that ACR is worse than TRSi, it just has not been publicised in the media as TRSi has been. As a matter of fact is some of ACR workers left ACR and went to work for TRSi, not the other way around, so go figure.

  4. wonuv d twinteefore

    I also honestly believe medical transcription can work in Barbados. Bajans are educated people, I do not see why it can’t work here in BIM. It just takes a while for most people to get into the hang of things. I tell you it is not easy to do it, but me personally, I was in the first graduating class and have succeeded in this field thus far. So, it is not for everybody, but I am sure there are others that loved being an MT.

  5. bajan who knows

    You had it right the first time–we WERE plucked like chickens. The training was horrible and all that company wanted to do was take the goverment’s money. As someone who worked close with the staff at the training center, I can say they didn’t care about Barbados or anyone else but taking as much money as they could from our beloved island.

  6. Peltdownman

    Harvey’s reason for closing: “because of a lack of funding and that Government was unwilling to provide finance to the company, he was unable to continue operating the business here.”
    _________________________________-
    Excuse me?! This self-made millionaire based his business on government subsidy. So now we’re not just expected to buy tourists, but jobs as well!

  7. Former employee

    Mr. Harvey established a business in Barbados under circumstances where he believed it would eventually be profitable. His belief that the Barbados business would be profitable was based upon his twenty successful years in the medical transcription business.

    He invested his money, time and effort in a partnership with the Barbados government. He was not taking any salary, profits or money from the business. Unfortunately for Mr. Harvey his twenty successful years in the business and twenty successful years training thousands of MT specialists were not enough to be successful in Barbados and he lost his investment. People from Barbados should ask themselves why Mr. Harvey was unsuccessful in Barbados when he is successful in other places. People from Barbados should ask themselves why medical transcription businesses don’t work in Barbados when they work in thousands of other locations.

  8. Another Former Employee

    Perhaps what one should ask is why it was not successful? Along those lines, how could it be when we were constantly sent home by noon every day in the last several months? What happened to all of the business that we were told would be brought to Barbados?

    In the same vein, if things are so successful elsewhere, one should ask why even in the US this company has laid off more people in the last six months than they have hired. A company that is now very small, from one that was so large, doesn’t seem like success to me. Even in the interview with Invest Barbados, it was said they were in trouble financially.

    If the workers here in Barbados had had work, then perhaps the business could have thrived. In the end, isn’t that the leader’s responsibility?

  9. Bajan Hype

    As the writer rightfully said, the Medical Transcription work environment is a “competitive, deadline-driven pressure cooker; it’s a demanding job that takes special skills.” I was a part of the company and left because of matters beyond my control. From working with TRSi Barbados I can say that it would be wrong to blame this on Mr. Harvey. Have we the Bajans checked our work ethics? Were we doing as required in the medical transcription industry? These were the questions needed to be asked before we started laying blame. We had some dedicated MTs, we had some that were very good at it, but what we hadn’t was good organizational and managerial skills. Upon entering the Medical Transcription field we were told that we needed to do X,Y, Z to succeed, but many failed to comply with what needed to be done so as to excel.

    Maybe the training was horrible to some people because they couldn’t grasp the concept. TRSi has a Program that anyone with good English Language skills and the ability to learn new things, as required by any medical transcription company, can succeed. Just to reiterate, if our work ethics were given an effort and we could have worked together as a team and not have favoritism and back-biting within the company, maybe the outcome would have been different; maybe we would have succeeded; maybe we would have been “the transcription capital of the Caribbean.”

  10. Crocidile tears

    Another foreign businessman gets shafted. Nothing to see here. Invest Barbados CEO Wayne Kirton has to spin it so the next victim won’t be nervous when he sign on the dotted line. Has any foreigner made money in a joint venture with Barbados? Ever?

  11. BGR

    BFP says:
    ”For those who think that Barbados somehow got plucked like a chicken by some fast-talking American named Robert Harvey (photo above), we’d invite you to have a look around the internet before you start talking foolishness.”

    Then quotes:

    ”When he shut down the company Mr. Harvey told his employees that “…because of a lack of funding and that Government was unwilling to provide finance to the company, he was unable to continue operating the business here.”

    The above quotes says it all.

    Caribbean governments are known for their subsidies. Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a business idea will ‘rush’ down this side, engaged our leaders with fanciful figures, echoing the employment boosted line and as someone said, when the gravy train stops, they skipped the island having lined their pockets with taxpayer’s monies.

    MT can work here. It should have started on a much smaller scale first.

  12. exemployee

    He sold the company (TRS) to Transcend because he wanted to get out of the production aspect of MT and focus on the training.

    The client which TRSi had, Transcend took that from TRSi and then they got rid of TRSi Barbados and basically left us with no work. As Bob had sold the company, he had no say in it seems.

    The company closed because there was no work for us to do. Had there been work coming in, I believe it would still be open.

    The aforementioned client which we had in the beginning was a temporary one, while they were changing systems. We did such a wonderful job on their work that they came back and asked for us to do their work permanently. That just proves we had the quality. People left because of the pay rate change to 8 cents a line, but I know some of the transcriptionists at the end of the week were taking home more than the supervisors and QA staff who were being paid over $10/hr.

    Had I been apart of management, I would not have let go that first batch of people just because they were not making the lines. Me, personally, I would take quality over quantity any day. the patients come first.

  13. Bosun

    Lucky thing we did not fork out any Knighthoods like Antigua.

  14. Transcend

    Join Transcend

    Transcend, the industry’s second largest transcription company based in the United States, offers excellent career opportunities for qualified full-time and part-time medical language specialists (MLSs) with a positive attitude and a desire to work in a successful team environment. Our primary focus is acute care transcription, but we occasionally hire for clinical and radiology accounts. By joining the Transcend team, you will become an integral part of an organization totaling nearly 2,000 domestic MLSs working in a setting that is uniquely built around our customers and employees.

    Transcend also employs offshore MLS personnel but they have to be able to meet our standards of accuracy and performance.

  15. Transcend

    Barbados didn’t perform. It’s as simple as that. The few who did meet our standards are welcome to apply and work from home.

  16. exemployee

    @transcend… I saw some of your work and believe me you guys had your share of errors in those reports as well, so don’t go pretending you all were perfect MTs.

    If you are paying a person 4 cents and 8 cents a line, in order for those persons to have money to take home and feed their families, they are going to think production wise and therefore errors will occur. Nobody can live off that here in BIM.

  17. Previous Employee

    It’s simply not true that the Barbados MTs didn’t perform. Remember, that customer came back to Barbados because of the quality of their work, even after they had plans to go elsewhere on a new platform. This entire thing is unfortunate for everyone concerned. With the right workload and the ability to keep people working all day long, perhaps one could have made a go of it.

    While SOME Bajans do have issues with work ethics and not showing up, it is unfair to paint everyone with the same brush. As for the quality of the work they did, the US customer sure appreciated it and in the end, it is the customer who counts.

  18. BFP

    Hi exemployee,

    You say “Nobody can live off that here in BIM.” meaning the 4 cents to 8 cents per line piece rates you quote as being paid by Transcend.

    Could that be the whole problem with MT in Barbados? We can’t compete with overseas India etc?

    If so, it seems to me that fact should have been looked into before we threw big tax dollars at this project.

    Once again, there have been no answers as to why government thought we could compete with India etc in this industry. What were they thinking?

  19. ecoanalyst

    As an observer I must say the following:

    1. Barbadians, like some other regional nationals, have overblown ideas about their capabilities, fed by their “academic certificates” that may not worth the paper they are printed on.
    2. They do not like hard work … on a consistent basis… so they can never be really successful in a global economy where you compete with everyone else. Managers and supervisors are good at talking and analyzing and going to “workshops”… but do very little real work in improving management systems.
    3. Guyana has a branch of this company that is being expanded. I would bet that the productivity there is higher … so we do not have to go to India to compare this issue.
    4. Unions, especially the BWA, will be the downfall of the country. We live in an information age and unions based from the previous machine age are obsolete. Does Google or Microsoft or Dell have unions?? NO!!!!
    5. The country is on a sliding slope where people are all looking out for themselves and their perks and big cars and salaries. Too many government employees. Too much red tape. BTTI and other government corporations wasting money. Nothing will change because it is political. No one wants to make the necessary cuts and reorganization or they would lose the next elections… and the over sized government workers – “an army of occupation”, just waiting to retire and draw pensions. .. If there are pensions 10 years from now….
    … who will change the attitude Bajans have to hard work and commitment. No one!!

    As an economist I see the high personal and government debt and spending; the creeping graft and corruption within government.. customs, companies div etc… and the declining businesses investment in this small island as the beginning of a long process of decline for Barbados…. especially in these hard economic times…. I do hope I am wrong… but things do not look good!

    Nothing will change so “wine down” and enjoy Cropover!

  20. greenman

    I know nothing about medical transcription but after 10 minutes flipping through a couple of dozen webpages I know that the margins are slim because of international competition. I confirm what BFP says about India getting wise and pushing accuracy after losing some credibility 7 years ago. This is not a business I would be thinking about getting into. Too much competition and any time China or India is your competition you have to go big or stay home. Barbados is too small and we don’t want to work for nothing like they do in India.

  21. 178

    It saddens my heart to see some of the clueless people who have commented on this post. I was with the company from the time the door opened until it closed and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our transcriptionists were highly skilled. I was in a position to have access to the work of the transcriptionists and I must say that their work was one of a high quality.

    While I am glad that this story has been made aware to the general public and everyone is entitled to their views I think that the visions of some are clearly blurred.

    The employees were surely dealt a terrible blow. The majority of us gave up our jobs to do this course as we were promised a better way of life. Secondly we took out student loans as we saw it as an investment in our future (medical transcription industry) and then we went into the world of work where it was not the bed of roses as we were made to believe.

    I believe that the collapse of this industry was not as a result of the underperformance of the transcriptionists, but extremely poor managerial skills. Others have argued that it was always the intention of Robert Harvery to coin the government out of millions of dollars to train individuals and provide them with jobs for a short period of time, as promised in the contract and then pull out.

    If such is the case, Robert Harvey is probably laughing his pants off at the “stupid bajan government” as he sips on his cocktail. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I will argue that this stance is not the case.

    Of course something went terribly wrong and the goverment needs to fix it and do it quickly. People have invested way too much time and are now armed with adequate skills which would make us equal to our american colleagues and we need to taken seriously as we have proven ourselves time and time again.

    I hope the right person comes into contact with this and makes a step in the right direction to provide jobs for all of us who were disadvantaged.

    In conclusion, anyone who is planning to come to the rescue of the transcriptionists should be aware of the previous supervisors Kim and Tahajra. These 2 women are walking timebombs and their attitudes remind me of slave days as they were always against their own and it was all about a power struggle for them. For anyone to be at their most productive they must be comfortable in the surroundings and this can only be done with a management team that truly cares about each and every individual.

  22. Transcription Business Owner US

    As a US transcription business owner I believe that MT can work in Barbados. TRSI did not manage the project well and had set expectations at an unrealistic level in order to secure a lucrative training contract. That being said, there are skilled MTs in Barbados and the business can certainly thrive there. TRSI did not have adequate work available to sustain the office – that is the fault of no one but poor sales capability on the part of TRSI. In a developing market sales have to be targeted to meet the skills and demands of the local workforce – this was not done. There is still opportunity and the any recession in the US is not to blame for TRSI’s failure to perform.

  23. 178

    I am appealing to any MT owner to give us a chance. Let us prove the naysayers wrong and make this industry thrive in Barbados. We CAN do it.

  24. caribman

    The MT is huge but I believe that other factors are at play here. We have a small and generally well educated work force and this is not always a plus with foreign investors. Sometimes we have these situations and they will continue as long as we dont’t accept exploitation of our workers.And under no circumstances are we to allow our workers to be exploited.

  25. 66

    There seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The transcriptionists are now getting a couple of other options in the same field. We will see how this one plays out.

  26. Pingback: One medical transcription success story in Barbados! « Barbados Free Press

  27. a real mt is in the house

    I must say that I am impressed by the interest shown in the medical transcription industry in Barbados, when I told my colleagues that this was a scam it was only a feeling, but after realising that invest Barbados had invited people to take a chunk out of the rock by offering individual companies from overseas to come forward and give Medical transcription training with subsidies, incentives and tax havens and the whole like I knew for sure. After almost losing my whole being to medical transcription, graduating with a distinction and becoming an MT-plus at TRSi I felt for sure I had secured a career, as planned, by 40 years. My blood sweat and tears are in TRSi. Wynell is a big part of the problem she never knew what was going on and never fought for justice. She was a house slave and I warned her that it will be to her detriment cause no man is an island.

    She told me I would suffer, and Kim and Tahajra whatever, they were no problem to me, maybe they abused their authority but that is bajans for you. I blame it on Cathy and Bob not caring. They did not hire the best persons to manage and so instead of improvement the business digressed . The best MTs were kicked out if they spoke out. And I was one that did, I told the others to say something before it was too late, but they were afraid of losing the pick they had already lost. Girls and guys do not let this be a setback for you but see it as a forward step the things you have learnt can never be taken out of your head, therefore go forward knowing that you can be anything you want to be, even a doctor. Let know one make you feel that you can’t do something, you guys have proven that you can and you did.

    Love all you MTs from MT.

  28. Junior

    Differently any job like this that seeks to exploit people and have you work in a policed environment would only succeed where people struggle for basic survival. I never had a job where one is to work at 100% of your rate or capacity all of the time and also never had a job where one is not to make mistakes. That to me would exemplify “rat race”. If this was the only job about in then I could see people giving it there all, else it fail massive. All of these types of jobs I have come across carry a high turnover among the workers. MTs data entry, call centre jobs, these are the modern day equivalent of picking cotton.

  29. Junior

    I am very sorry for anyone that had to read this sentence “If this was the only job about in then I could see people giving it there all, else it fail massive.” in my post. It should have been written as “If this was the only job about in then I could see people giving it their all, else it fail massive.”
    See what I mean bout mistakes, I could not even post a comment without making 2.

  30. millertheanunnaki

    BFP readers should be aware that this failed project has cost the Barbadian taxpayers in excess of $13,000,000.00 (yes, thirteen million dollars!!) with no return to show for it. The project was totally funded by the government with no financial contribution from overseas interests. Most of this expenditure went overseas towards professional and consultancy fees.

  31. BFP

    Hello millertheanunnaki,

    Can you please provide a little more information that would show the $13 million figure is accurate? Thanks!

  32. millertheanunnaki

    To BFP
    I stand by my word and I can back up my claim. For the sake of transparency and public accountability, the agency (Invest Barbados) responsible for the execution of the medical transcription project should be asked to account for the funds provided by the taxpayers of this country. The other agencies of government responsible for the oversight and financial administration and control of this huge outlay of capital should also be called to account. The parent Ministry should be asked to provide an account of this colossal financial outlay. In the interest of economy, efficiency and effectiveness the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) and the Auditor General should investigate this wastage of money. These agencies of government should be given the opportunity to report to the people of Barbados. If the primary agency refuses to respond to queries from the public in a reasonable time or attempts to cover up this matter, BFP will be made aware of the facts through another medium of communication.

  33. lazy

    http://www.nationnews.com/articles/view/union-boss-raps-report/

    i believe this is relevant to this topic. What is interesting is the double down by the union.. are these people living in this world ? but so typical.

  34. 131

    There is the silly belief among business graduates that you can supply an undifferentiated good or service and “brand” it and people will purchase the good or service at a high price. You can brand a differentiated service but you cannot brand an undifferentiated product or service and sell it at a higher price when other people are producing the same product or good and selling at a lower price. This is true for sugar as well as MTservices.

  35. The whole point is that the government should not be spending our tax dollars speculating in any business, they should concentrate on creating a clear and level playing field for the private sector to get on with business. Giving background support where suitable and making it easy and less burdensome to hire a new employee for example. When they actually participate there is a conflict of interest and quite frankly governments everywhere are just bad at business and they have to be to be any good at government. They have to be above it so to speak. The talents needed for making laws for all to follow are just too different from reading the market. Just look at hotels, the sugar industry (a million other examples) and now this. Governments should only do “business” where it is a utility and where no competition would have a monopoly in place and then we can at least exercise some control at the ballot box. Pore productivity in Barbados is a whole new topic but one that needs to be addressed everywhere. Sorry just the way it is.

  36. Yet more joy for the idiot Taxpayer!

    Miller, Thank you for the heads-up re.
    ..this failed project has cost the Barbadian taxpayers in excess of $13,000,000.00 (yes, thirteen million dollars!!)
    with no return to show for it.
    The project was totally funded by the government with no financial contribution from overseas interests.
    Most of this expenditure went overseas towards professional and consultancy fees.

    Bajans are such suckerrrrs! We get ‘taken’ time and again!
    No wonder my cost-of-living is thru the goddam roof!
    It’s becoz of Crapola like THIS!

  37. Pingback: Antigua involved in TRSi Medical Transcription lawsuit | Barbados Free Press