30th January 2003

It is a distinct privilege and honour to have been asked by Sojourner Douglass College in The Bahamas to give these remarks here this evening on the occasion of the installation of Theresa Moxey Ingraham to the post of Executive Director.  This is an accomplishment of note for her and I wish to congratulate her and wish her every success.

I have known Mrs. Moxey Ingraham for many years, years that are too many to count.  We marched together as part of the anti apartheid movement in the Bahamas when Nelson Mandela was still a prisoner in South Africa’s jails.   We were both a part of the civil liberties department of the Improved Benevolent Order of Elks of the World.   She and I shared the same aspirations politically even though on different sides.  The office that I now hold as Public Service Minister is one in which she served.

And so it is against that background that I was delighted to accept the invitation to speak.   I want to congratulate Sojourner Douglass for their choice and I know that she will apply her administrative skills toward ensuring the success of the venture and that the College has an appropriately high profile in the community.

Sojourner is not a stranger to The Bahamas.  Many Bahamians of mature years were able to complete their formal educations as a result of the pioneering work of the College here in Nassau.   Many public servants have taken advantage of the work of the College, and I am pleased to say that in my months as Public Service Minister Sojourner has been working closely with the Public Service Commission to ensure that the programmes that are offered to assist the public service remain relevant and in accordance with the highest standards that today’s education demands.

The Bahamas is moving more and more into a competitive world.  I have just come back from California where I addressed the Altadena United Methodist Church.  I was invited to deliver the sermon for the morning, and I tried in that setting to be able to put the case for The Bahamas as a country, and for the right of The Bahamas to exist as a people.

But if The Bahamas is to survive it must be properly managed.  Nowhere is the need for management more demanding and acute than in the public service.  The management of the dispensing of public goods and services must be fair, rational and certain.  No parochial considerations ought to interfere with how those goods and services are dispensed.  One’s political persuasion should not be a part of the mix about whether or not you receive social service assistance or a government job.  Each Bahamian taxpayer has an equal right to the economic goods of the society.

But it is the challenge of any one who wishes to give public service in The Bahamas to be able to keep up with the onslaught of the pressures for modernization around the world.  Today we as a Parliament were briefed on the e commerce world and how The Bahamas must catch up.

We heard from sectors of the public service how there are not the resources to keep up.  And some times our friends who are our diplomatic and trading partners overseas do not quite understand or appreciate why we are not able to execute as quickly as we should.

In another forum, I made the point that the most pressing concern that I have as Public Service Minster is trying to discover how it is that we can overcome the inertia which drags the delivery of public goods and services to a virtual halt.  It has gotten to the point where it routinely takes six or seven months for the simplest decisions to be delivered.

In all of our national life, it appears to me that there needs to be shift in the culture.  We have to accept a way of life that means quicker, faster and more efficient.  At the same time, we need to ensure a way of life that has an abiding respect for the privacy of the individual with an absence of regulation.  How we blend those two is the job for smart politicians, civic leaders and the civil society generally.

Education is of course the key.  Studies have shown that the surest way to rise out of poverty is to invest in and education.  And the state must ensure that each child gets and education.  I cannot doubt that it was because my parents invested in the education that I have and because The Bahamas lent its assistance from both public sector and private sector initiatives that I am able to enjoy the quality of life that I have today.

And so my job, the job of Mrs. Moxey Ingraham as an educator is to ensure that there are many more Bahamians who will come to share in an enhanced and enriched quality of life.  I know that she is equal to the task, and I wish her every success as she goes about that task.

I am particularly interested in the further development of the public administration degree and making it relevant to the present public service system that we have.  There needs of course to be increased emphasis on quantitative analysis in public administration and so math and economic skills will have to be sharpened.  But Bahamians can do it.

And so as I leave this evening, I wish to commend these few words to you as you develop the programmes that will make Sojourner a success.  I thank you again for inviting me and I say congratulations to Mrs. Moxey Ingraham and the school on this most important occasion.