BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC — Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur is calling on the private and public sectors as well as the labour movement to help produce a new economic plan for Barbados.

Arthur told a public meeting at the weekend that the mid-term economic plan of the present government has failed to bring relief to Barbadians.

“Barbados needs to have a recovery programme set out clearly drawing from the best minds in this country, from the private and public sectors and from the labour movement,” Arthur said, saying he has been working on similar economic programmes for St Kitts and Nevis and Grenada focusing on debt management.

“We can do it,” he told supporters reminding them that Barbados found itself in the same situation in 1994.

“I can tell you this …once you tap the ingenuity of the people of this country, once you call on them to do what they can do in an effort to have this country succeed … they will. The people of Barbados want Barbados to succeed,” he said.

“What we have here in Barbados is not the Standards and Poor’s rating but the destruction of our standard of living unless something is done urgently to turn things around.

He said the free bus passes for schoolchildren, which was announced by the David Thompson administration, the development of constituency councils and the summer camps which were subsidised “cannot and will not turn around the economy”.

Arthur was also critical of the government over its handling of the CLICO and British American Insurance matter following the financial problems plaguing their parent company, CL Financial in Trinidad and Tobago.

He said in contrast, the governments of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) had put in place strategies to deal with the collapse of the insurance companies.

“The governments have also launched a medical insurance fund, which will allow people with existing claims to get their benefit. They are on the point on establishing a new insurance company to take over CLICO,” he said.