The debate over Pro-Active Management Systems? loss of the contract for the senior secondary school has gradually evolved into a debate over black empowerment and what exactly that means.

This debate, inevitably, has been muddied by the fact that the Government has no formal ?affirmative action? policy, but various Ministers and departments have been practising their own ad hoc policies.

With regard to Pro-Active, Premier Alex Scott has maintained from the start that the company did not get the contract because it was black-owned but because he felt it was the best bidder, in large part because of its commitment to hire and train Bermudian construction workers.

But clearly, many other people, including the Bermuda Industrial Union, did see it as an ?empowerment? project, and on that basis feel Pro-Active ?should not have been allowed to fail?.

This, surely, is nonsense. Any programme of affirmative action cannot remove all of the accountability from the beneficiary. The idea has to be to recognise qualified and able individuals and businesses who may have been discriminated against because of race and then to let them get on with the job.

If that?s not the standard, then all that is created is a culture of dependency consisting of businesses and people who will fail when the Government handouts stop.