- Hope does not live here
Living in SVG is difficult for huge segments of the people. Listening to conversations concerning our reality is mind-numbing for an even greater segment. The official version of anything local is startling to the ear for me. I need to read it. I can’t take it any longer.
It’s as if we live in an Orwellian universe where underdevelopment is synonymous with progress. Stagnation is hailed as progress, mediocrity is extolled as greatness, revolution is reduced to a single phrase, and leadership is reduced to a smiling picture op.
Our small nation of 110,000 people being named as the deadliest on the planet in terms of homicides is not an attractive or acceptable sight. SVG kills more than one person per week (53, with three more weeks in 2023). Officialdom, on the other hand, goes about its business as normal. Rather than confronting our lethal and dismal reality, we are informed that our neighbours have more homicides than us, despite the fact that our neighbours have many more citizens than we do.
Instead of reminding the police high command that it has to repair its connection with the communities it promised to protect and serve, we engage in public relations stunts like anti-violence marches and rallies. People go about their business, displaying derision and disdain for the charade while high-sounding, get-tough remarks are thundered from rostrums.
Those in power clearly lack the creativity to recognise that the minister of security needs to leave. The cops must set a good example. Officers must recognise that illicit conduct have repercussions. You can’t build confidence by brutalising residents, stealing cocaine from the evidence room, beating young guys to a pulp, shooting and killing. People must be convinced that the law applies to everyone. Justice cannot be deceitful.
SVG requires a shake-up. The people must awaken.
We cannot have entire classes of students who are unable to read at grade level and gangs of young guys roaming the streets begging and doing anything else, while the education minister goes to Parliament and claims that the school dropout rate has dropped drastically. The reality on the ground contradicts the official story.
Tell no lies, and make no claims of easy victory.
According to the World Bank, more than 40% of Vincentian youngsters are unemployed. According to government statistics, youth make up more than 60% of the population. According to observers, up to 30% of our folks are unemployed. No, says the government. The unemployment rate is 20%. One wonders if the country’s power elite go across it. Do they pay attention to the growing commotion on the windward and leeward highways, as well as in the village? Do they roam the streets and see the throngs of idle hands and empty brains waiting for the devil’s command?
Another absurdity that has become usual is underemployment. The Youth Employment Service (YES) of the government is a job attachment project that provides young people with employment and job-related training. Many young individuals have worked for YES for many years. For some, it is now a full-time career with a monthly salary of a few hundred dollars. The salary is insufficient to cover these young people’s fundamental necessities, but they are counted as employed as well. They work for pitiful wages and live in abject poverty. They have become part of the swelling numbers of the working poor.
However, the administration claims that the unemployment situation cannot be that bad because just 1,500 people attended Sandals’ job fair. We have been assured that many of those were already employed. As a result, reports of widespread unemployment are anti-government propaganda.
We were warned that wages don’t tell the whole story when a regional research firm revealed that SVG had among of the lowest wages in the area. Consider the expense of living. We took a peek. It’s also hot here. Consider the Human Development Index, which assesses life possibilities. SVG has a stronger social safety net than many of its neighbours. Which neighbour, please? Those getting poverty relief assistance received a $5 rise last week. The impoverished are given a stunning $8.33 per day. They require assistance in transporting that amount to the shops and retailers in time for Christmas.
Discuss absurdity.
In their ludicrous narrative, they despise our nation’s future and refuse to accept that they are the source of the blanket of hopelessness and helplessness that blankets the land.
They no longer discuss poverty, which is close to 40% of the population. However, there was a period when poverty alleviation was a hot-button topic on everyone’s lips. The reports of the Kiara consultants were often mentioned. Poverty rates were apparently reducing, and the number of indigents dropped from 28 to less than 3%. However, when the 2018 poverty assessment report revealed that poverty was wreaking havoc on four out of every ten Vincentians, the power elite lost its cool. They cursed the messenger and disregarded the message after the report was revealed.
We’ve come to assume that our roads are abysmal. We pay the licencing and insurance payments knowing that money will be needed to purchase brakes, shocks, suspension, and tyres. We pay for repairs caused by falling into craters or colliding with other road users while attempting to avoid craters.
But don’t panic; government authorities reiterate that everyone is aware that our roads are in poor condition. The Kuwaiti Fund borrowed $86 million in 2015 for the mother of all road repair initiatives. That child is stillborn. The works ministry announced a $120 million road rehabilitation project earlier this year. That’s a total of $200 million in less than a decade. Nonetheless, there has been no discernible improvement in our roadways. To hell with the people once visitors can travel safely and comfortably along the windward and leeward routes.
We must refuse to accept the ludicrous.
