SVG needs holistic cleansing

We in SVG seem to be making headlines for the wrong reasons. Over the past weeks it had to do with our breaking another record with the number of homicides. Ironically perhaps, the night before the Police were scheduled on Friday, November 24, to hold a march and rally in Layou, another murder occurred in that small town. The rally carried as its theme, “Love is the Answer”, a calypso by Alston “Becket” Cyrus, a distinguished member of that community. Shortly after that, the headlines shifted to the economic front with the multi-island state listed as the country that had the lowest paying jobs in the Caribbean. A PayPulse report of the Caribbean Society for Human Resource Professionals presented at the Export-Import Bank of Jamaica, stated in its 2023 report that 73.3 per cent of the salaries in SVG fell below the regional average.

Although relevant statistics are hard to come by, one of the talking points in the country over the past months have been the number of young people migrating, not only to the traditional developed countries to which our people had been migrating, but also to other countries in the region where there are better prospects of getting jobs and in fact higher paying jobs. This latest report provides a context for this and is to a large extent a statement on the economy of the country. What was being highlighted over the years were the high number of unemployed persons, especially young persons, and the state of poverty. These have become and in fact are in reality political issues. What some of us do with issues that paint a political picture are to sweep them under the carpet and to treat the matters as fake news. They are however matters that demand a serious conversation in the country, for until we accept that we have problems we will never be in a position to fix them.

We don’t even have to start with who caused the problems or bears responsibility for them. Let us identify the problems and work back from there. They might originate from the global environment, but then that brings in the question of how our neighbours deal with them. With a divided country and the Prime Minister stating publicly that he doesn’t speak with the Leader of Parliamentary Opposition, we are treading on dangerous grounds. The important point to keep in mind is that politics colours much of what transpires in this country. Even the development of the country is treated primarily as a political matter, so that on the economic front the politics of a matter takes precedence. A number of projects are therefore introduced more for the supposed political gains than for the economic and development ones. As we continue into our 44th year of the anniversary of our independence what strikes me most is that there is not much emphasis put on productivity but more on the ability to attract loans and in cases to beg. Actually, I should have found a different word than beg, but call it by any other name it amounts to the same thing. We lambast beggars on the street and decry them for not going to look for jobs (regardless of whether or not they exist) but for government to do the same on a larger and maybe more sophisticated scale, it savours of high statesmanship.

Every now and then we hear of hundreds of bags of some fruit or vegetable being exported, but what does this amount to? I am fond of recounting the tale of a number of businessmen going abroad to promote certain products. The establishments to which they went were impressed with what they were producing, but the crux arrived when the establishments asked if they could deliver so many hundred bags or tons or whatever the quantity measure every two weeks. Our friends could not respond positively to that because the necessary homework and organisation had not been done. By the way, on the agricultural front, when last was there an Agricultural Census, for this is an important starting point for our ability to organise the export of agricultural produce.

I am worried about the number of loans we have been negotiating recently. I am not sure about the foreign debt situation and our debt to GDP ratio. We have to produce to be able to export and to earn foreign exchange and to be in a position to pay those debts before being forced into a situation where most of what we earn is spent on debt repayment. All these are matters which should concern all of us as citizens of this country and we ought to have a say in how these are handled. We must be prepared to speak on these issues. We must demand transparency and more information. These issues unfortunately don’t matter to a lot of us. But holistic cleaning is desperately needed. This will include, of course, the spiritual side.

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian