British Virgin Islanders should also be blamed

Former President of the Virgin Islands Party Carvin Malone said members of the public who are British Virgin Islanders should also be blamed for the fact that several of the territory’s most sensitive top jobs are being held by expatriates, especially natives of the United Kingdom.

According to him, a number of local people are qualified to take up the positions, but they decline to do so possibly because they don’t intend to make personal sacrifices in the interest of the territory.

He said natives don’t have to serve in the posts for a protracted period of time, noting that local lawyer Dancia Penn served as Attorney General for under 10 years.

Malone further reasoned that the important issue is not how well the British Virgin Islander serves, but how willing such person is to serve the territory. Skills, he added, can always be sharpened.

“I am not gonna sit here and blame the appointer – the one who made the appointment – only. I am putting the onus on us; we have to step forward. Why don’t we have [British Virgin Islanders serving as] the Director of Public Prosecutions or Attorney General? We have a lot of capable people… It might be the level of service required for the country that you need to have, and you can probably do it for four or eight years. Dancia did it for [about] eight years. Whether or not she did a good job; that is neither here nor there. The fact is that she stepped in a particular task.”

“Where are the people to serve? These people need to step forward,” Malone said while he noted that he spent 17 years serving his homeland by being president of the Virgin Islands Party.

Malone, in the meantime, said competent British Virgin Islanders who are prevented from giving their service to the territory should speak out.

“If they are stepping forward and not given the opportunity, then they need to shout out so we can know that ‘I have offered myself and I am being rejected every step of the road,” he advised this week during the ‘Honestly Speaking’ television programme hosted by Claude Skelton Cline.

Malone continued: “If our people are 85 percent ready for the posts and they need 15 percent, they should be given the 15 percent help, because the other persons are coming in and doing on-the-job training anyway. I have an issue with the fact that some of the key positions that we made sure were held by Virgin Islanders have now gone out of our grasp.

Some of the key posts now held by persons from the United Kingdom are: Governor, Director of Public Prosecutions, Accountant General, Commissioner of Police, and Superintendent of Prisons.