“No one left behind”

This was but one of the fancy slogans used by the One Bermuda Alliance during the late stages of its 2012 campaign.

What it truly meant with those words is anyone’s guess

What people have seen with its actions has been a lot more clear.

Chop Chop

In the beginning of October, school principals were informed via the education commissioner that the OBA Cabinet, which includes both education minister Wayne Scott and Michael Dunkley, the Premier, had cut the budget for substitute teachers.

“Cabinet has made a decision, due to the status of the Government’s current 2015-16 Budget, to institute a hiring freeze with immediate effect with no exceptions.

“Therefore, please be advised that due to this hiring freeze, we are unable to offer any allocated substitute teacher positions. Unfortunately, this was unforeseen and therefore your school will be unable to have an allocated substitute teacher position. Also affected by the hiring freeze is the utilisation of on-call substitute teachers.” — Acting education commissioner Freddie Evans (October 1, 2015)

Basically, this would mean scores of Bermudians, mostly women with families, who have trained to become teachers, would not have a job.

Effectively, they would be left behind.

Even worse, this would mean Bermudian schoolchildren could find themselves without teachers. This would mean that their education and they themselves would be left behind.

Within the same month of October 2015, 15 Bermudian staff members who run community centres in St George’s, Hamilton and Sandys were informed that the Government will not be renewing their contracts and they will no longer have employment.

Basically, this would mean that they and their families would be left behind.

Again, the larger impact would be on the hundreds of Bermudian children who would be without proper staffing at these community centres. In some cases, the community centres themselves would have to be shut down, as all the staff would have lost their jobs.

So, again, hundreds of Bermudian children left behind.

Who is next?

As Bermudians, we need to ask ourselves these three questions:

• With all of the education challenges, why must our children be subjected to constant budget cuts?

• With all of our social challenges, why must our community centres face loss of staff and closure?

• Why must Bermudians be constantly left behind?

For many, each one of these acts make it crystal clear that much of what the OBA spoke of in the lead-up to the election was nothing more than empty, political slogans.

“Oh-oh-oh, we can’t take your slogans no more,

Can’t take your slogans no more.”

— Bob Marley