Private Sector representative in the Upper House of Parliament, Senator Salim Rahaman has lauded the efforts of the 18-month old Dickon Mitchell Congress government to invite Grenadians living in the Diaspora to serve on State-owned bodies.
In making his contribution to the 2024 Budget Debate in the Senate, Rahaman gave support to the initiative since it helped to address the brain drain problem in the country.
He praised the Congress regime for their approach in recruiting personnel from outside the country to serve on the various statutory bodies and organisations in the country.
He said that PM Mitchell’s decision on the issue definitely solved the lack of professional personnel within certain parts of the public sector.
“What he effectively did was to remove the brain drain that we have suffered from that has plagued our country for decades especially within the public realm of service.
“Any Grenadian anywhere in the world could now leverage their talent, their qualification and experience broadening the small pool of the qualified which we had mostly to choose from prior to him doing that.”
According to Sen. Rahaman, the changes in the formation of the statutory bodies under the new administration has created a new circumstance, as well as in the leaders of these statutory bodies as some of them are Grenadians living in the diaspora.
“Prior to 2020, I cannot recall a single statutory body that was chaired by a Grenadian outside of Grenada or one that had several board members outside of the borders of our country and it is possible there was but it would have a very rare occurrence,” he said.
He went on to say: “GRENLEC is an example of a company that benefited tremendously from that and we saw how the electricity sector developed over the years.”
Sen. Rahaman noted that with the 2020 coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the world, online meeting spaces would have never been utilised as before in that way and the evolution occurring in Grenada would not have occurred.
“The true and positive effects, I believe, of this simple approach on statutory board governance is yet to be seen and realised (but) at the very top levels people still run the show.”
Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) may have a role in certain aspects of business life, Sen. Rahaman believes that humans still have an integral role to play in the decision making process of businesses as leaders.
“It is true that artificial intelligence will automate and manage many aspects of redundancy and decision making in the future but not at the top levels of directorship. At those levels, humans will and still control the ship even though the systems of AI manage the day to day operations of the vessel,” he remarked.