BLESSINGS UPON the Auditor-General Adrian Strachan. He seems to be the only man we can rely upon these days to tell us the truth.

He was recently charged to make a survey of the salaries and perks of a number of public sector bosses, and he has exposed them, not only for their disproportionate salaries, but as tax evaders and liars.

Mr. Strachan finds that there is $60 million in extra benefits for these executives. In spite of the fact that they were told by the Prime Minister to submit to him a full list of their salaries and perks, Mr. Strachan has discovered that much of the information which they gave the Prime Minister, and was announced in the House, was fake.

Just take one example, it now turns out that Derick Lati-beaudiere, the Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, is now drawing down $9.1 million and may not have disclosed certain of his perks to the Prime Minister. In a recent column I described Mr. Latibeaudiere as a man of integrity. If he has been guilty of non-disclosure, he will not mind if I now withdraw the compliment.

Mr. Strachan was able to make an investigation of by no means all of these public organisations and their bosses, and I think it is important that all of them should be investigated, for it is probable that those not yet investigated are also up to a lot of unseemly practices. One thing that should certainly happen now is that the commissioner of income tax should come down like a ton of bricks on all those multi-millionaires and collect taxes on all the perks; not only those currently due, but the taxes which should have been paid for years back.

At the time of writing, Gavin Chen at least had the decency to resign, and Nathan Richards, and Claudette Lawrence have been removed. People who evade tax and lie to the Prime Minister are dishonest people, and are clearly unfit to hold an executive position. All of those executives who are guilty should either resign or be fired, contract or no contract, for in cases like these contracts are irrelevant.

Coming clean

The Prime Minister has made a statement in the House concerning these matters, and I am glad to say that it was not the whitewash performance that I expected. He has indeed, to a great extent, come clean. But he is still leaving us all in great uncertainty as to what action is to be taken against these fat cats. He still talks of many further investigations though I should have thought that Mr. Strachan's was good enough to be going on with.

The Prime Minister infers that there is another committee that has to make a report on how these salaries and perks came to be made, and by whom. It makes me feel that if Mr. Patterson many years ago had been on the Titanic, he would have jumped into a lifeboat having announced that he had formed a committee amongst the doomed passengers, and was awaiting their report on why the ship was sinking.

The fact is that Audley Shaw, greatly helped by Mr. Strachan, have opened a can of worms, and the Government should be careful that they all don't crawl out to safe havens.

Hope Gardens

The situation with Hope Gardens is another bit of disgraceful nonsense. I am glad to see that two old friends, Vivian Blake and John Maxwell, have got together to make a formal objection to the Hope Housing Scheme.

As I have written before, we don't have much in the way of green open spaces for the use of the citizens in the Corporate Area. The only people who could possibly benefit from the destruction of Hope Gardens for the purpose of building luxury houses are those who are already adequately housed. Those who will be buying these houses will not, I suppose, be too keen to support the objections of Mr. Blake and Mr. Maxwell, for they are the sort of people on the whole who don't really care what the Government does so long as it is done for their benefit.

This column fully supports Mr. Blake and Mr. Maxwell in their formal objection. I hope they will be able to save Hope Gardens so that it may be restored to a beautiful and tranquil park for all our people to enjoy as it once was so many long years ago.

More nonsense

Another piece of nonsense is the matter of the Corruption Bill. There is an excellent article about this in The Gleaner of Wednesday, December 1 by Senator Anthony Johnson. He pointed out that this Bill is a grave offence against Press freedom. He writes: "Who told the JLP Finance Spokesman of the magnificent salaries in the Government agencies? Would Mr. Shaw have been subject to jail if he had revealed the facts on a talk show or at a public meeting?"

The fact is that the Corruption Bill is a serious and direct attack upon the freedom of the Press. The Press has protested, but it appears that the Government does not intend to pay the slightest attention. The Government pays no attention to any protest which does not cost them popular votes, and it is regrettable but true that the great majority of people in Jamaica don't really give a damn about Press freedom, nor do they understand the implications of its loss.

Another old friend of mine, Hector Bernard, has suggested in his newsletter, Insight, that the newspapers and electronic media could command more attention from the Government if they threatened not to publish the names and activities of their politicians. This is an excellent idea, but I fear unworkable. In Jamaica too many shareholders, and too many Press and media bosses have too many of their own fish to fry to unite in such an action.

The state of our economy

Professor Norman Girvan of the University of the West Indies (UWI) is reported to have spoken in a recent speech about our internal debt trap. The professor pointed out that high Government borrowing and high interest rates to mounting debts have resulted in low productive investment and stagnant growth, and this becomes a kind of vicious circle.

It looks as if the professor has been reading my column for I have been saying this for ages. Nevertheless, the professor painted a very accurate picture of our financial situation, and the various factors which have led us to our present position.

While I am grateful that we have an academic who is telling us accurately how things now are, Professor Girvan, as the top economist at the UWI, should be telling us and the Government what ought now to be done to alleviate the situation, but he is not doing so. I suppose it is typical of the academic mind that it can tell us where we came from yesterday to arrive to where we are today, but not to concern itself with what we are supposed to do to reach tomorrow. I would find it very encouraging if the good professor would show us and the Government the way out of the debt trap which he so well describes.

I am no professional economist, but I have made some suggestions on the subject in my column. I would not accuse the professor of plagiarism if he reads a few more of my columns and, perhaps, adopted some of the suggestions I have made. As a columnist, I cannot afford the luxury enjoyed by academics of telling things as they are without at the same time telling things as they ought to be.