Submitted by the People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

As recently as August 25 2010, in an 8:57 am post on BU, the PDC stated, inter alia: “Surely this deepening poverty and misery among the most productive and hardworking people in this country (at this time of political economic depression) will make the purpose of having the Ministry of Social Transformation’s Country Assessment of Living Conditions in Barbados seem more nonsensical and absurd than ever before, when it ought to have been clear in the first place, that neither they nor this wretched DLP Government are dealing with the real root causes of poverty and marginalization in this Barbadian society, nor are they equipped to deal with such. For, poverty cannot be dealt with adequately by any joke social agency whatever the academic qualifications are of the persons who comprise it, when already the facts of the matter are such that poverty in Barbados has long had fundamental political material and financial causes.

Furthermore, that this joke DLP Government can claim that the primary focus of the domestic policy is on building a society rather than an economy, makes the fact that there is an impending social crisis of great proportions waiting to happen sound like a DLP party that is prone to child’s play.”

Now, out of the blue the Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment, Urban and Rural Development, Mr Chris Sinckler, has been telling many people in Barbados and beyond that his Ministry is going to be setting up a Poverty Reduction Empowerment Program (PREP) that will be prepping persons who fall on hard times for re-entry into mainstream society (page 3, Barbados Advocate, Monday 30 August 2010).

While this Barbados Advocate’s story did not say when, where, or through which medium this information was given by the Minister, it made it quite clear that the Welfare to Work Program – another failed poverty scheme – which would have been established under Sinckler’s Ministry, will be no longer be; that in fact,  it will be finished with, and the PREP program made to take its place.

Now, before we go any further in this article,  it is clear that the Minister is messing all around himself and on himself, figuratively speaking, and is in a very malodorous state. And he must be told so in very definitive and loud terms.

First of all, the Minister seems totally unaware and oblivious to the fact that government of which he is a part of in this country is the biggest creator of poverty in this land – and is the biggest instrumental cause of poverty  in the society – and that until a serious and progressive government comes into place and deals with the fundamental causes of poverty in this country and government’s role in increasing poverty conditions in this country, we in this Barbados would be going no where at all in fundamentally alleviating  poverty in this country.

Secondly, for the Minister to set up such a PREP program – whosoever they will be that will run it, or whatsoever the purpose it is that it is designed to achieve –  can only be described by the PDC as another exercise in political ministerial bureaucratic messing up-waiting-to-happen, and will be a certain definite waste of the people’s time and energy and income, given the massive  failures of far bigger and more structured poverty alleviation programs in this country.

And thirdly, it is moreover important now to remind Mr. Sinckler about how that monumental political joker from St. Peter, in the mid nineties, also had a so-called awakening about the need for poverty alleviation in this country, during a political canvass of the St. Michael North West Constituency (the Constituency he now ironically represents in the House of Assembly since 2008) in support of Mark Williams, after having seen for himself such deep seated poverty in that constituency; or was it that that occasion had provided the perfect excuse for the then BLP Government’s  leading the way in getting a certain type of IADB funding into Barbados, or its laying the foundation for further NGO funding from the Government of Barbados and other funding sources for various kinds of poverty alleviation proposals for precisely political reasons, and to foster the beggar syndrome mentality that is inexorably found within many NGOs in Barbados?

Nevertheless, though, thereafter the joker’s experience, many manner of things were so-called done to help alleviate poverty in Barbados, including the commissioning then of an IADB funded survey on poverty in Barbados (see online references to the Diez de Medina study 1997) on poverty in Barbados by Professor Andrew Downes, and refer to an online draft paper by Audrey Browne on Barbados’ Experience With Poverty Surveys), the creation of a Poverty Alleviation Program by the then BLP Government; the creating of a Ministry of Social Transformation that was headed by Mr. Hamilton Lashley, and the setting up of a poverty alleviation bureau within the said Ministry of  Social Transformation.

Really, too, around that time poverty alleviation was the biggest buzzterm in the political vernacular of so many people, despite its  however having so little meaning!!!
We even recall that poverty alleviation was so very scandalously tied to big elitist capital investment projects by that same monstrous political joker from St. Peter, in an address to mainly some local elites/pseudo-elites during the official opening of  the Apes Hill Project in St. James some few  years ago.

So, now, with all of those things having been so-called done under the last BLP Government, it could only now mean that – when one carefully now looks back at those times then – poverty alleviation meant objectively one fundamental thing: the taking of money and material by the then BLP government and some other local and international donors, and the throwing of that money and material at many poor and vulnerable people in Barbados  under the pretext of poverty alleviation to keep them politically quieter, weaker and more dependent than in the recent past then – Nothing fundamentally else.

For, here is it that in Barbados today incidences of poverty and misery and social deviances are becoming more and more pervasive and prevalent among the poor and the marginal middle classes, as a direct result of the consistent implementation of so many  intellectually politically backward and bankrupt policies of both the present DLP Government and the last BLP Government, and even though when we in Barbados have had DLP/BLP Governments that very erroneously falsely think that they are democratic socialist ones.

And, therefore, the very contemptible situation is seen  by the PDC whereby many of those who had benefitted from those poverty alleviation measures then, now find that the same money and material that were thrown at them in the context of poverty alleviation would have long been systematically taken from them and/or devalued respectively by this DLP Government; so that what we in Barbados have now is Mr. Sinckler taking his turn to give them and some others poverty alleviation. Woe the poverty cycle!!!

And, so, Sinckler, like another professed democratic socialist, that monstrous political joker from St. Peter, rather than deal critically with the fundamental causes of poverty in Barbados, prefers to play a dirty messy ring round game with the symptoms of poverty and with many of those who are now living in a state of poverty, perhaps to the chattering delight of many elites in this country – who, too, through implementation of their own private sector policies and outlooks are among the biggest most dastard creators of poverty in this country.

So, that this situation whereby many people – who are now or still poor and marginalized in this country, and who have been deliberately MADE into these ways by governments and the elites especially, and in such circumstances where Barbadians have had these governments  continuing to fool many of the people that they are committed to democratic socialist ideals, is a very damnable one, and one that continues to be axised on the many Western Euro-centric economic and financial methods and measurements that have been used by these governments and elites in their persisting  in creating the disgusting phenomenon of poverty amid plenty in Barbados.

Thus, it is most appropriate for the PDC to look at some of the available evidence assembled in very recent times  of the damaging political economic financial effects and conditions that have been wrought on the broad masses and middle classes in this country by the cruel and sick Euro-centric policies and measures of those governments and elitist people, and to draw our own very reasonable assumptions conclusions from them about the worsening state of poverty, and about the performance of some poverty indicators in Barbados.

Hence, according to the January 2010 Central Bank Report on the performance of the Barbados economy in 2009, with so-called inflation reaching 8.6 % in 2008, and with the cost of living and doing business in Barbados, experientially reaching stratospheric levels in 2007/2008, the poverty line today Wednesday, 1 September, 2010, must surely be set at more than the $ 110 per week per person that was needed by he/she to have a basic nutritional  basket of food and a few other things, according to the same Diaz de Medina.

And therefore too with the increases in FUEL prices by this wretched DLP Government in April 2008, and with the  increases in  MURDEROUS TAXATION by this said DLP Government in July 2008,  and with their adverse consequential impact on employment and domestic business activity levels since July 2008 and up to this point – unemployment was estimated to have went from 8.1% in 2008 to just over 10% in 2009, and GDP activity involving the Tourism, Construction, Agricultural and Manufacturing Sectors, in 2009 was estimated to have contracted by 5.3% in contrast with 2008 (2010 Central Bank Report of 2009 performance of the Barbados economy) – must mean that today the percentage of all households that was estimated to be living below the poverty line in the said Diez de Medina study must be damn well far more than the 12.7 % which represented 10, 500 households or 20 per cent of the total population in 1996.

And furthermore with there having been serious declines in international business sector activity, Foreign Direct Investment, and severe reductions in foreign remittances into Barbados – according to the said Central Bank 2010 Report, new licenses in 2009 were only a little more than half the number recorded in 2007 and 2008 in the international business sector; net private capital inflows slumped by BDS $ 295.3 million  in 2009, and remittances declined in 2009, must – along with consideration of the aforegoing variables and indicators in the two immediately proceeding paragraphs – mean that today the distribution of income across the country is far more unequal than that which, according to Professor Downes, was denoted in Medina survey whereby the top 10 per cent of the households received 32.1 per cent of total household income compared with 2.2 per cent for the bottom 10 per cent.

Hence,  Minister Sinckler is in an ideological and practical mess by his seeking to make some people in this country believe that this damned  DLP Government really cares about the worsening plight of the poor and marginalized in this country, which itself has been wickedly helped brought on by the draconian policies of this DLP Government, by his ministry’s establishing some measly  program PREP. Such behaviour is akin to a person deliberately setting his house on fire and then trying to put the fire out himself.

And, too, what nonsense attributed to him in the Barbados Advocate story about the Ministry of Social Care giving persons a hand up and not a hand out, when in truth and in fact the government has already severed the bloody hand itself from the person himself/herself that would otherwise have been been used to receive the Ministry’s so-called hand up, and what greater nonsense reportedly from the Minister about prepping persons who fall on hard  times for re-entry into mainstream society, when it is a fact that all poor and marginal middle class people already live on the fringes and margins of society of Barbados. What nonsense!!

Finally, the PDC knows that for poverty, misery and social deviance to be reasonably reduced to the minimumest levels in this country, it must necessitate first the removal of the DLP/BLP from the Parliament of this this country – thereby creating space for newer parties that are people-centered and that are very committed to do a lot for the masses and middle classes, and secondly, in an orderly harmonious way altogether, the Abolition of TAXATION, INTEREST RATES, INSTITUTIONAL REPAYABLE PRODUCTIVE LOANS, THE ABOLITION OF WORK, ETC. and in their places systems that we have dealt with before on here, and following from such things many more of the policies that we have enunciated on here and elsewhere.

Hence, these and other policies and measures are the things that we certainly know about that are needed to fundamentally deal with poverty in this country, along with the gradual improvements in the delivery of  certain educational, health, nutritional, housing and other needs and solutions in this country.

We Oblige.