Dawn Ritch, Contributor
MATTERS OF legality and finance vanish in the twinkling of an eye when some people are in a blind panic. Dem tun fool. In prime ministers this must surely be an unlucky trait. Grenadian Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell was a pitiful sight. His own home destroyed by hurricane, 80 per cent of the housing stock of the country decimated (was the construction concrete nog?) and the island even now still without electricity.
One can only hope that the wealthy Trinidadian Government to our far south east will be much more generous to the Grenadians than they were to us. Jamaica was given $100 million after Hurricane Ivan, or a mere US$1.3 million as a contribution from Trinidad. When one considers that Trinidadian companies have a virtual lock on the local financial sector as well as owning the cement company, it seems a derisive sum. But no more than we deserve they suppose.
Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning must, therefore, try hard to be a little more forthcoming with the Grenadians. After all, Trinidad has a handsome trade surplus with Jamaica, where they not only own us, but much of what we buy is sold to us by them. This is not the time for Trinidad to be miserly, least of all with Grenada. The 'Spice Island's nutmeg trees will not grow back in a year like our banana plants. With far less economic foundation than Prime Minister Manning our own Prime Minister the Most Honourable is hardly in miserly mode. He promises help in kind to Grenada, and a let-off on a truly historic scale to the hurricane-ravaged in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the National Housing Trust and the National Insurance Fund. Even those who didn't sustain damage will be given a cheque. I'm in support of hurricane relief for Jamaican farmers and destitute families. But I hardly think it should apply to householders who sustained no damage, even though it might make the Most Honourable feel good to do so.
MISGUIDED POLICIES
In a country saddled with debt as a result of a series of misguided policies pursued by this Government in the 1990s, national financial resources have to be husbanded. Relief must only be given to the needy. Not the merely stressed out. Hurricane preparations are things that households have to make. Reimburse-ments for them ought not be made by the state. Nor should the homeless be allowed to build shacks on the side of mountain streams, or the foreshore of the sea, nor in front of a salt pond by the sea. And if they continue to be allowed to burn down the forest in order to make coal, thousands will begin to die from the flooding and mudslides, like in Haiti.
There is a job of work to be done in Jamaica, but nobody seems to want to do it, least of all the ruling party. Patterson is getting a great deal of credit from media for Cable & Wireless' phones continuing to work during the hurricane, for power being returned to most of Jamaica in a relatively short time, and for water being well on its way. But this has nothing to do with the Most Honourable. Telephone and light are owned by foreign multinationals, and water, which continues to be owned by the Government, is the slowpoke of the three.
Government's solid waste management company still hasn't picked up the downed trees in most sections. Nor the huge piles of rusty pieces of zinc and other household rubbish neatly stacked on the sidewalks of poor communities everywhere. Why has it proven impossible for the state to help those who are helping themselves? The devastated residents of Bull Bay, Caribbean Terrace, Portland Cottage and others have had a number of dignitaries both local and foreign, coming to look at them. But nobody is really doing anything for them. Not even a wreath.
In rural Jamaica many will be hard-pressed to find money to buy flour, sugar, bread and, above all, salt for their families, including school-going children. The people from ravaged settlements are going to need the patience of Job. The social hardship in the farming community will be grave unless they are given urgent flood relief and farming materials. When they suffer today, all of Jamaica suffers tomorrow. So the priority for relief must be the nation's farmers.
In three national broadcasts on hurricane and hurricane relief, Patterson has yet to tell the hundreds needing relocation that this is so. Nor has he made it so. He apparently believes that Greater Kingston is all there is to Jamaica. And that the only work in the island are desk jobs in air-conditioned offices, including his own, and the endless work of endless committees trying to decide on what to do about everything.
RATE OF GROWTH
Readers must note that between January of this year and the end of July, the national debt jumped significantly by $71 billion. Despite claims to the contrary by the Minister of Finance Dr. Omar Davies, who pleads not to receive a hurricane estimate from "every little man", the Jamaican Government is increasing the national debt at a significant rate of growth, instead of paying it down. The Most Honourable said that the estimate and rising for Hurricane Ivan damage across agriculture, roads and housing is $22.4 billion. I don't think he has a clue. The debt jumped by $71 billion before the disaster, and not a sheet of zinc had been brought yet. Somebody who runs accounts like these is bound to dip into NHT and NIF savings to fund disaster relief.
The Government is boasting that the national budget is on track to July and they're going to keep it on track. The budget deficit is J$2.7 billion lower than projected. This is thanks no doubt to slow payment for the services contracted by the Government, and the some J$3 billion plus that is owed to the financial sector and private pension schemes, representing tax withheld from interest payments that is reimbursable, along with creative or deferred financing arrangements.
The country's domestic debt moved from $709.7 billion at the end of May this year, to $751.4 by the end of July. Sooner or later there will be no money left to run the rest of the country. There is certainly none left for disaster relief. Not unless we dip into the savings of NHT contributors and government pensioners. As indeed we are now doing with, it seems to me, a certain abandon. This is not the Government's money, but poor people's money across the length and breadth of this island, there for other purposes and belonging solely to them. The Government is sure to come to us in the future claiming Ivan as the excuse for why their figures behave as badly as they do. But their figures were like that even without Ivan. So the excuses for our continued decline just pile up, along with the national debt.
