Ronald Thwaites | Making sense of the week that was

We can’t leave it like this. The prosecutor at the Integrity Commission is reported as confirming that there is evidence of wrongdoing in the granting of contracts several years ago by a minister of Government, but that given the elapse of time, causing crippling difficulties for both prosecution and defence, criminal charges will not be brought.

So did the wrong happen or not? Is a decision not to charge equivalent to an exoneration? Hardly. Left hanging, can that be fair to the person(s) involved or good for the nation’s repute?

SEXY BUSINESS

“Nobaddy nah wait till married again.” That’s the jingle advertising some pill to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Such prevention is undoubtedly very good. But what about the implicit endorsement of casual sex, which is at the heart of family weakness in Jamaica? Premature sex, uncommitted intimacy, resulting in children being conceived, is not only the thief of true love, but the root of weak homes and the social disorder which is blighting this nation.

Crying out for parental responsibility in the context of fractured or non-existent mother-father relations will serve little purpose. Some years ago, I tried to move Parliament to at least engage in a discussion on serviceable family structures to ground our national economic and social objectives. There was no interest in that. But there is significant interest in legalising abortion.

LEARNT DISORDER

Check the brutality witnessed at Denham Town High School last week. Where did those youth learn to treat another like that? That’s the style of the Dudus’ principality and sadly, often of police guardrooms. Do we think any state of emergency can stop that cruelty?

The rash of school violence is spreading. The free-for-all COVID holiday has aggravated a pre-existing problem. Teachers are scared. If they intervene when there is disorder, they are likely to be injured or criminally charged. There are no effective disciplinary measures in our schools now. So most times, the bad behaviour is just ignored and the melee tolerated. The few learn, the rest pass through and ‘graduate’.

GOING FOR BROKE

Will there be money this year to properly fund an enlarged National Youth Service programme? What I see is the same inadequate money as last year, going forward to 2026-2027 without increase. The allocation for education is effectively less than last year, given the rate of inflation. There is a bit more in the capital budget than last year.

In the powerful United States, they are finally recognising that two decades of advances in math and literacy have been wiped out by the suspension of classes due to COVID. They estimate a consequential loss of $900 billion in future earnings.

Our flat spend on education in the upcoming financial year; the bullying of the teachers to agree to substandard wages; continuing our calcified system of teaching and learning all lead to the conclusion that we think that Jamaica is immune from similar learning loss. We should have gone for broke with education in this Budget. We have not – to our short- and long-term peril.

BUDGET IMPACT

The Estimates of Expenditure are uninspiring. The garlands from the International Monetary Fund mean nothing to the people on East Queen Street, where the price of a meal has gone up by another ‘bills’ since November while the minimum wage remains static.

Anything less than $500, plus taxi fare, per day for a school youth means that they will be hungry and underperforming in class. The Government is to be commended for moving the daily lunch rates for PATH students to $250 per day. Sadly, despite that, inadequate nutrition will be the continuing reality for at least 30 per cent of students. Please reconsider the $40 per day nutritional support for recognised basic-school students.

Deal with these issues at the otherwise useless Standing Finance Committee while you crow about how buoyant tax collections are and how compliant our creditors know us to be. It is sinful to exult over macroeconomic successes while tens of thousands of people can’t afford healthy food. Ask why so many others, those with education and potential, express their disappointment in the nation’s prospects by opting for exile. Michael Manley isn’t around to be blamed any longer.

SALARIES AND DEBTS

Can we hope that the people reviewing the Budget will enquire how inclusive growth can be envisaged when the bulk of taxpayers’ money is going to pay salaries and service debt? If that skew was connected with a burst of new value-adding performance by the public sector, savings in unproductive fuel consumption and reduction of non-essential consumer imports, then we might understand the strategy. Or if there was the likelihood of a surge of exports to pay for our ‘foreign-mind’ profligacy, the outlook would be positive. But none of that is happening. It’s business as usual as we gloat over our own inadequacy and call poverty, prosperity.

JUTC AND IMPORTED FOOD

There is no better (and no more bitter) example of this folly than the allocation of another $7 billion to the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) again this year; and even after that, we are told to expect a JUTC deficit of a similar figure. Guess who will pay that, too, while not a cogent word from the Government on rationalising public transportation. So we pay dearly every year for creating and sustaining the very chaos on the roads which we then piously regret.

The CARICOM summit just concluded has committed to reduce by 2025, only three years away, the region’s annual food import expenditure of US$5 billion by 25 per cent. What will Jamaica’s contribution to this monumental task be? Who is taking responsibility? How does it square with the acres of bush and wild cane now producing nothing on our finest arable and irrigated lands, or the topsoil being scraped off and never replaced on the mined-out slopes?

And if the Russians had signalled that they were only interested in red dirt and not cattle farming, why leave them with the cows to starve and run down the breed? And if the Chinese saw profit in sugar production but not in cane cultivation, why have we given them the best cane lands to waste while we import almost every spoon of sugar we use?

Makes sense?

Rev Ronald G Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.