ORDER NO. 2 - TO RESUME DEBATE OF SECOND READING OF THE VAGRANCY (AMENDMENT) BILL, 1995
Mr. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for St.
Lucy.
April 18, 1995
Mr. D. St. E. KELLMAN: Mr. Speaker, this Act, as
I have listened to many speakers from the other side, seems
to have nothing to do with drugs, as was mentioned by the
Honourable Minister when he said, in his opening
statement that he is trying to eradicate the beach of drugs,
et cetera.
While I listened to other speakers, on the other side,
I have heard about car washers, about taximen, about
vendors and I have heard a lot of other things. We have a
problem in this country and I am not sure if the
Honourable Member for St. Thomas is aware of it, that
there is a group of people who would feed advice to people
and the type of advice that they wbuld give to people is
advice to give a particular impression. So that when you
come with legislation, that advice that they have given you
is advice to protect their interest.
We had in this country in the sixties, the seventies
and early eighties certain activities that were controlled by
what we would call the beach vendors and other small
businessmen. We now have in this country a situation
where people who we would have said previously would
not have gotten involved in these activities like beach
vending, the operating of watercraft, et cetera. We have a
situation now where they are getting involved in these
activities. It seems to me that they have smartly set about
to feed information into the authorities to make sure that
small businessmen are branded in such a way that these
small businessmen will not be able to operate any longer.
We have a situation where, previously, you had large
hotels that were not involved in vending. They were not
involved in watersports. Some of them were not even
involved in restaurants or minimarts. But now they are
getting involved in these things and they are trying to say
that the Laws that we have at present that they are not
good laws.
They are saying that people who are trying to
promote their businesses, et cetera, that they are vagrants.
We have to look at the information that is being fed to us
and we must be sure that the information is not information
that is fed to us to deprive small people who are competing
against other business people who previously used finance
as the way to promote their businesses, but now they are
trying to use us, as politicians, to protect their interest
As you are aware, Sir, I am always talking about the
all-inclusive concept. You can see it You can see how
these people plan for you. They have brought in the system
of all-inclusive tourism to keep out the small man. They
are now asking us to amend the Vagrancy Act, also to keep
out the small man.
Check and see that, previously, the tourism industry
was controlled by what we call the foreigners. I am not
talking about the small hotels, et cetera. But all of a
sudden, there are groups of people in Barbados who are
getting involved in tourism, people who never were
accustomed to getting involved in tourism. They want
everything for themselves, Mr. Speaker, not realizing that,
in Barbados this is a country that belongs to all of us and
that we must have a share of the cake and it must be
equally divided. They feel that once they buy a hotel that
they must be able to supply every service to that hotel, not
realizing that, if they provide…
Mr. SPEAKER: One minute, please. Honourable
Members, on this side, I am having some difficulty hearing
the Honourable Member. Let us hear him* please.
Mr. D. St. E. KELLMAN: Yes, Sir. Not realizing that
if the policy of the Government is to promote small
business and if that policy is to be developed, that these
large hoteliers must leave some scope where these small
businessmen can continue their businesses and also
encourage other small businessmen to get involved to help
solve the unemployment situation, in this country. But we
are not getting that, Sir.
What you are finding is a situation where people are
building hotels and now they are trying to provide
everything, every possible service. They are keeping out
the small man. What would happen? The small man cannot
afford to pay for an ad on television. He has to approach
the tourists and, under this Act, he would be regarded as
annoying someone or harassing someone, when that small
man would only be promoting a service that he is offering.
Sometimes he cannot do it himself. He might ask a friend
of his to go and encourage some tourists to come and get
on his speed boat, buy some craft from him or something
like that. The friend, when he is approached, he might not
be carrying a licence for that particular field and the next
thing you know he is a criminal, he is not a rogue or
vagabond any more.
In this Century we cannot have Laws that would
hamper small business people. We must be looking after
their interest. They are the ones that would need our
protection. As the rich would say, Sir, you do not look
after the dollars, the dollars look after themselves. It is the
cents and pennies that you have to look after. I am saying
to this Government, it is not the big fish you have to look
after, you have to look after the small fish.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to know if there is a
survey - and I am always hearing that there are surveys
saying that there is beach harassment - I should like to
know if there is a breakdown. Whether this information is
coming from the English tourists, whether it is coming
from the Germans, the Americans or the Canadians.
I had the opportunity to visit some friends of mine a
couple Saturdays ago and I was told that they went to a
particular hotel to have breakfast with a friend and the lady
said to this other friend, “I cannot understand the people in
Barbados anymore. The workers are not coming to work as
they used to come to work, 10 or 20 years ago. I am not
seeing anybody serving me in suits anymore.” Can you
imagine what I am saying, Sir? We have to be careful,
Sir,…
Mr. SPEAKER: I am trying to. I am trying.
Mr. D. St. E. KELLMAN: …that we do not follow
information from people who have a particular interest to
serve. Mr. Speaker, we know that the English tourists are
quite different - and that is if you are involved or if you
know anything about tourism - from the American tourists,
the Canadian tourists or the German tourists. That is if you
know anything about tourism, Sir.
I am also aware that there are people from your
constituency who operate in the St. James area and I know
you would have an interest in this because you would want
to be sure that they will not be branded as vagrants, rogues
or vagabonds.
We must look after the vulnerable group because we
have found ourselves, in this country, where even the
taximen, as the Honourable Member for St. Joseph would
want you to believe, even the taximen that he has spoken
to are a bit worried that they are now not getting their fair
share of the cake. They are complaining that there are other
people - and all-inclusive tourism again - before 50 taxi
cars used to service 4 hotels. Now one person with 2 or 3
buses is servicing a hotel. They are cutting out 50 people.
Multiply 50 by 6 and that is 300 people. Then do the
multiplier effect, Sir, and you would see the disadvantage
that all-inclusive tourism is putting on this country. Also
then take the amendments to the Vagrancy Act and you tell
me if you do not see a situation where in the long run,
instead of creating jobs, you will be creating unemployment
in this country. 4.10 p.m.
Sir, wherever there is freedom there is the possibility
of employment but whenever there are strict rules and
guidelines you will always get problems with employment
because there are honest people who might be prepared to
apply for a licence to work on the beach but if they find
that the rules and laws are enforced in such a way they
might feel within themselves that if they go on the beach
somebody might interpret the law the wrong way and
they might become criminals. One has to be very careful
how they amend certain rules and amend certain laws
because you might set out to do something that is very
good, and I believe the intention of the Honourable
Member for St. Thomas is good, but it is not the
Honourable Member for St. Thomas who would have to
police these things. He is not going to be on the spot. You
can have a situation, Sir, where a competitor feeds
information to a policeman about a vendor and when that
information gets to the policeman he believes the
information, that the beach vendor is doing something
wrong, when in truth and in fact the beach vendor might
not be doing anything wrong but he might have been
framed because he might have been competing with one of
his competitors and the competitor is about to use the
Vagrancy Act against him.
Sir, on this topic about harassment, a lot of us, nearly
everybody in here, we have been harassed every Sunday,
sometimes as late as 8 o’clock in the night. We have been
harassed by people and sometimes we do not know them.
Sometimes we cannot even identify with them but we
never ask the politicians for laws to deal with them. So,
Sir, we must ask ourselves if there is harassment for the
tourists and the harassment for the tourists is different to
the harassment for Barbadians.
Sir, I have no problem with anybody trying to
promote their business but at the same time, if someone is
free to come to me to promote their business and I can
give them an ear, I feel other people have a right to
promote theirs too.
Sir, I am in a position where I listen to people and I
have heard many cases of people getting involved in water
sports at large hotels and they give the beach vendors and
the people in water sports bad names. They say all sorts of
things to them, to the wardens and to the policemen just to
keep the trade for themselves. We must be sure that
whatever we are doing in this House that we are doing it
with a clear conscience and that at the end of the day we
are representing the interests of all and not a minority
group, Sir.
I am saying, Sir, that the hoteliers have a right to get
involved in whatever they want to get involved in. That is
their right. But we as lawmakers, we should not be seen as
the ones promoting their interests just because we have to
protect the hotel industry and it is in our interest to protect
the hotel industry, but at the same time we must take that
information and we must be sure that the information that
is coming to us is the correct information.
I am also told, Sir, that sometimes a lot of the crimes
that we hear about, they never occur. There are people who
put in claims to the police station just to make an insurance
claim. Do you know when that happens who will be
blamed for it? Your constituents, my constituents, the
constituents of the Honourable Member for St. James
North, the constituents of the Honourable Member for St.
James South, because the impression out there is that there
are bad boys on the beaches and that they will do anything
wrong. When you hear of a situation where someone has
been robbed of jewelry when in truth and fact they never
had the jewelry in Barbados, the people of Barbados will
be blamed for stealing the jewelry when it never came to
Barbados.
If we are going to amend the Vagrancy Act, we have
to be sure in our minds that it will be policed in such a
way that innocent people will not be unfaired.
Tell me something, Sir. If a black American comes to
Barbados and he is travelling along one of the streets and
someone goes up to him and promotes a service, would
that be regarded as harassment? If a white American comes
to Barbados and someone goes up to that person on the
street, would that be regarded as harassment?
Sir, we need to know what is harassment, we need to
know what is annoyance. We need to be sure in our minds
that people out there trying to earn a living are not doing
something that is wrong. You might have two situations.
You might have two vendors and today when you are
talking about vendors you are not talking about white or
black because there are white vendors and there are black
vendors so do not bring in the talk about racism or
anything like that If a Bajan approaches a tourist someone
might regard that as harassment If a German approaches
a tourist it would not be regarded as harassment even
though the German might be offering the same thing that
the Bajan is offering. I would like to know, Sir, what in the
Vagrancy Act would protect the German and what would
protect the Bajan? I would like to know whether the
policeman would know that the German was harassing the
tourist or whether he would know that the Bajan is
harassing the tourist?
Mr. Speaker, the reason why I have mentioned that
point is that there are business people in Barbados now,
who in order to get around the system, are not employing
locals to promote their businesses anymore they are
importing some of the same tourists because they are
saying they have the one to one contact because they
cannot get into the hotels to promote their businesses so
what they are doing, they are getting the tourists now to do
it for themselves.
I want to know how would you differentiate between
the local harassment, as they would say, according to the
Act and the foreign harassment? I would like to know if
the foreign harassment is a criminal offence like how it
like to know if there is one law for the tourists and there
is a different law for locals. You see, Mr. Speaker, even
though I compliment the Honourable Attorney General of
what he is trying to do, his intentions might be right but I
believe that the end results will be wrong, Sir. I look
forward to the Honourable Member for Christ Church
South when he makes his contribution because I would like
to hear what he has to say on this particular amendment I
am sure, Sir, that for the amount of research that the
Honourable Member for Christ Church South has done for
today alone that he will have a lot to say in this House. I
know that after he has finished his research he will have to
call for another amendment to the Vagrancy Act, because
he will convinced that there are laws already in Barbados
to cover the areas that the Vagrancy Act would like to
cover.
I am saying, Sir, that another area we might have to
look at instead of amending the Vagrancy Act is to
increase the number of licences for vendors and other
people whether it is for beach vendors to operate beach
crafts, etc. There are lots of people on the beach who
would like to operate within the law but they are deprived
of a licence.
I think that the Honourable Attorney General can
speak to his comrades and make sure that… They are good
people and they are not trying to break the law because
they want to break the law, but it is a matter of survival
and we have a right to look after those people. I am saying
that those who feel within themselves that they are above
the law, well, that is a different matter.
Mr. Speaker, I have no choice and I have observed
that the Honourable Member for St James North has not
spoken on this debate. So I will have to put in his five
cents worth too, Sir. I feel that seeing the number of people
that he has working in his constituency on the beach that
he will find it extremely difficult to go against me, Sir, on
this particular point On his behalf, Sir, I would like to tell
the Honourable Member for St. Thomas that he should
have another look at this amendment. I believe and I will
repeat myself again, Sir, he means well on what he would
like to do. But you can identify the people. Look, do not
let anybody fool you. The same two people you see in
Bridgetown you see in St James, Oistins or up by
Chefette. They are known. The crimes are known, Sir, and
I am saying that, if you know people have a problem and
to be honest with you, Sir, I have to say to them: Why are
you annoying the tourists? They say to me that they are not
annoying the tourists. I am offering a service. It is true to
me that their approaches are wrong. That is only my
judgment, Sir. I am not saying that I am right and they are
wrong. What we need to find out, Sir, if they are doing
something wrong. We need to shape those people to make
sure that their approaches are correct, Sir. Because if you
bring a law, it is not going to change them if you do not
teach them correctly. What we need to do, Sir, is to change
the way they think. If you try to change the minds of those
people, Sir, you may not be able to convert all but you
may be able to convert some.
I honestly believe, Sir, that the licensed beach vendors
have a major role to play on the beaches. I honestly
believe, Sir, that you should not need policemen to police
the beaches. I believe that the licensed beach vendors in
their own interest should be doing that job. Because if you
are on the beach and you see someone doing something
that is going to jeopardize what you are doing, you have a
right to make sure you weed them out.
I am saying, Sir, that another area we might have to
look at instead of amending the Vagrancy Act is to
increase the number of licences for vendors and other
people whether it is for beach vendors to operate beach
crafts, etc. There are lots of people on the beach who
would like to operate within the law but they are deprived
of a licence. 4.25 p.m.
I think that the Honourable Attorney General can
speak to his comrades and make sure that… They are good
people and they are not trying to break the law because
they want to break the law, but it is a matter of survival
and we have a right to look after those people. I am saying
that those who feel within themselves that they are above
the law, well, that is a different matter.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to end by saying that we
must look to prptect jobs for people and not to deprive
people of jobs. Thank you very much, Sir.