Stop stupid talk and help the unfortunate

The Editor: Within recent times I have noticed with some concern comments in your paper on the CEPEP programme. Everyone seems to have something negative to say about most of the Government’s social programmes, except those who benefit most from them. I have never read in this newspaper or any other paper any convincing argument against CEPEP, with the exception of Mr Trevor Sudama. Nobody could even come up with an alternative.There is so much stupid talk that sometimes I really wonder. What type of job can you give people who are unskilled or unemployable? If they were employable, then they would be working. There is a chronic shortage of skilled labour on the job market.

Nobody can argue that fact. I am a small manufacturer and sometimes I have to farm out some of my contracts. Ask any one of those involved in the manufacturing sector and you will find out the truth. Government has to spend billions of dollars to re-engineer and retool those youth who were left behind by Basdeo Panday. Do you think that you can tell a single mother of four with no passes that she has to first go to train and then she will get a certificate and then she could apply for a job? Is it not better to give her a job that requires little or no particular skill so that at least she can look after her children so that they could have a fighting chance?

Black working class people had to face the brunt of the recession this country went through; thousands lost their COLA, benefits, houses, jobs and dignity. (It’s amazing these so-called analysts, pontificators do not speak/write about this). So if during the lean years they had to sacrifice so much, shouldn’t they  be able to benefit in times of plenty? But no, we have a bourgeois who seem to think that too much money is being spent on social intervention. They put forward no concepts, or ideas on how to deal with our complex, chronic social problems, simply because they cannot fathom it. Their world is made of plastic — plastic bank cards, credit cards, membership cards and platinum master cards. The only cards poor people have are party cards and ID cards. These same people seem to think that Abu Bakr is the problem. How can Bakr be the problem when he has thousands of youths in his organisation? Where are their parents? What attracts them to his organisation? These are questions that so-called intellectuals never ask, not because they don’t know the answer, but because they don’t care.

No one wants to take responsibility, their plastic cannot take heat. They don’t understand that  thousands of people have lost hope because their existence became wretched whilst they watched the same bourgeois looking down at them. I am not rich but my mobility is upward. I have no need for Government’s handouts but that does not mean that there aren’t those who do. It is high time we reach out to those who are most vulnerable around us and stop the stupid talk. It’s time black people take hold of what ever opportunity that exists... even a handout and move themselves forward.

Dane Christmas
D’Abadie