Govt ‘policies’ result in pain and poverty

This week, the print media carried excerpts of a statement by the Downtown Owners and Merchants Association (DOMA) in which Gregory Aboud lamented the low and worsening detection rate by the police for homicides.

The Prime Minister himself has been critical of the slow pace of the judicial process, and our overflowing prisons.

Aboud has joined with the mayor of Port-of-Spain in expressions of concern at the rising rate of street dwellers (homelessness) in the city.

A recent UK study clearly shows that cuts in social spending exacerbate homelessness.

Added to all of this we have learned that pauperisation is on the rampage and there are now an estimated 300,000 destitute citizens in TT who exist on less than $985 a month.

In the middle of this reality, we read almost daily of repeated calls by the business community, including DOMA, for the Government to “cut expenditure” further.

Economists like Terrence Farrell seem to share this view, in the name of a rising Budget deficit.

These same groups of people who champion extreme reductions in government spending also strongly favour the removal of fuel and other subsidies.

They demand that the Government rationalises the prevailing situation regarding the problem of “squatting”. These are the very people who rally behind a call for the State to stem the pervasive violence, the murders, and suicides. They often express empathy for an expanding impoverished and neglected underclass, usually comprising single-parent families.

These single mothers or fathers have been told in no uncertain terms that they must “wean themselves” off of the Government.

They have no choice but to “find work” at any cost, even if it involves having to leave unsupervised children at home.

Of course these children today are grossly disadvantaged since their nutritional status is left to chance charity. Their parents are ignorant of the type of friends they have. Our schools provide no nutritional support and the parents’ access to food — 13,000 of them — has been summarily removed.

Undernourished, unhealthy and neglected children under five-years-old are permanently disadvantaged. Their physical and emotional neglect constitute an unshakeable impediment to “normal” psychosocial, emotional and mental development.

I ask these patriots, would this Government’s curtailment in expenditure on the lone Forensic Science Centre which plays a vital role in homicide investigation not further impair crime detection? If the contracts of some 60 CSI police officers are not renewed in the name of further budget cuts, how will that affect the murder detection rate? If CEPEP and URP are truncated or discontinued, will this serve to reduce serious crime? When as a government you refuse to pay people for work they have done, what does that do to help reduce pauperisation? The “policies” being formulated by the PNM Government are creating affliction and poverty.

They are the fruit of an unimaginative Prime Minister who does not see the unnecessary and tragic human suffering he is causing this country.

STEVE SMITH via email