“The country is hungry, the country is poor, and we are in a “catch-ass state” in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.” That is how Opposition MP St Clair Leacock described the levels to which poverty exists in SVG.
In 2021, UNICEF reported that the poverty rate in SVG was higher than the average rate for the Eastern Caribbean. In 2020, ReliefWeb reported that 48.2% of the population was vulnerable to poverty.
Leacock, in his 2024 budget presentation, said almost 20,000 Vincentians depend on the government. SVG’s population is just over 100,000.
“Nearly 20,000 people currently, Beryl or no Beryl, COVID or no COVID, Soufriere or no Soufriere, are dependent on this government for food, for clothes, for shelter and for the general well-being.”.
Leacock said the government has introduced a class of poverty in this country called the “genteel poor’.
“It is their way of understanding that this country of ours is mired in poverty. We are a poverty-rich country; we have made poverty a commodity. Leacock stated, “Unfortunately, not many people want to buy it, leaving us as the principal consumers of that poverty.”
“To the extent that it would appear that even in our budget exercises, we are exploiting the poverty of the nation,” Leacock stated.
UNICEF also states that 41% of adolescents who live in women-run households live in poverty, compared to the male-led households’ poverty rate, which stands at 31%.
