Dawn Ritch, Contributor
THE nation knows that three overseas call centres in Jamaica are going belly-up, and, with them, the loss of over $700 million of taxpayers' money, money earned by this PNP Government in our name from the recent sale of cellular telephone licences to overseas interests. Over $4 billion was collected in this way.
The receipts from the sale of cell licences went into the country's Consolidated Fund, where they should have remained to be used in the people's interest.
Instead Mr. Phillip Paulwell, PNP Minister of Industry and Technology was permitted by Dr. Omar Davies, Finance Minister, to use hundreds of millions of dollars from it to establish the INTECH Fund, and give money away to foreigners for nothing in return.
Having frittered away the nation's substance, Paulwell coolly said it was a mistake, jumped on a jet ski and had himself three birthday parties.
In an interview with this newspaper on his celebrations, he suggested that he'd taken himself a well-earned rest.
Wasting money is not hard work. Hard work for Mr. Paulwell and his Cabinet colleagues would have been investing the money from the cell phone licence receipts, in small businesses owned by Jamaicans labouring under the yoke of stupid Government policies, paying teachers, and building vocational and remedial schools throughout the country.
That would have taken some doing; they couldn't just call a man, give him a cheque, and head off to Negril.
Giveaway
If Prime Minister P.J. Patterson really cared about Jamaica and Jamaicans, he might even have set up schools to teach English, instead of an INTECH Fund.
All Jamaicans ever needed before secondary schools were established by private British interests and the British colonial power, were the three Rs ... Reading, writing and arithmetic.
This used to be taught by parsons and post-mistresses. But some schools in Jamaica today cannot open in time for the school-term.
The problems range from no desks, no staff, to no toilets, no water, and above all no money. Not even a farthing for our ramshackle educational system, but instead a disgraceful waste of public funds upon foreigners.
Due to the collapse of the social and economic order, lawyers in our country are grossly overworked and can't always collect their fees. I really think, however, they should mount a class action suit on behalf of all taxpayers against the Government for this scandalous and continuing giveaway of the country's patrimony.
The frantic waste of $700 million on foreigners while our own children are without school fees, our people without jobs and no money to pay bills, is the most frightening dereliction of public duty and abject incompetence it is possible to conceive.
It is so injurious as to be malicious tyranny, and the Government should forthwith be investigated.
Make no mistake about it, Mr. Patterson fritters away public funds on foreigners and makes gifts of our strategic industries to overseas entities, because he has no hope for Jamaica and Jamaicans. And neither does Dr. Omar Davies, his Finance Minister.
This is because they believe that we are the ones who are incompetent and corrupt, and not they.
Thus the new foreign owners of the Jamaican financial sector have received going entities with most of the staff and systems still in place, clean balance sheets, and virtual giveaway terms with low down payment and future payments out of profits.
Any fool can make a profit that way, including Jamaicans, it doesn't take any special skill. What takes skill is what every Jamaican entrepreneur does every day, survive with a crazy Government like this one in power.
Between 1998 and today, the FINSAC debt grew from $48 billion to $120 billion, with only Dr. Davies and FINSAC in charge. You didn't do it, and I didn't do it.
In 1996, Price Waterhouse told them it would have take $24 billion to fix any problems there were in the sector, under the then ownership of Mutual Life, NCB, Century, Eagle and all the rest. Mr. Patterson was weak, however, and so Dr. Davies delayed and did nothing, until the problem became five times as large, and people's homes went on the auction block.
Now Dr. Davies unctuously announces that a deal is being done with Beal Bank for all Jamaicans with debts under $5 million.
Doesn't he realize that everybody pays taxes and many who have debts over $5 million are Jamaican small businesses and pensioners?
Yet he permits Minister Paulwell to throw away JA$700 million on backing overseas investors in dubious Internet call centres, instead of backing his own people, and seeing to their proper education.
Repatriation of profits
The repatriation of profits from this sale and the financial entities to overseas interests is going to sweep the country like a devastating social and economic hurricane.
The profits to be earned will have an adverse impact on our Balance of Payments, and within a short term the outflows will greatly exceed the original investments.
Dr. Davies should have remembered the elementary economic theory that as a country develops it must expand into the services sector.
Having cleaned up the financial sector, Dr. Davies made an unforgivable and devastating decision to have sold it off for little or nothing to foreign interests. Jamaica will never recover from this irresponsible decision.
Our development and balance of payments will be irreversibly set back. It is the worst economic decision that has ever been made in the history of the country.
Jamaicans not only will become bond slaves from increasing future indebtedness without a growing economy with the means to repay, but will be forever paying our dividends overseas to our new masters in the financial sector.
Thanks to the weakness of Prime Minister Patterson and the arrogance of Dr. Omar Davies, his Finance Minister.
If this is the resuscitation and rehabilitation of the financial sector and the Jamaican economy, then it is nothing more than a three-card trick played upon the taxpayers and voters of this country by the Prime Minister himself.
No wonder a senior executive in the IMF described Dr. Davies in his stewardship of the Ministry of Finance as "Houdini". The public must know that Houdini was an escape artist and illusionist of world-class reputation. It is not a compliment.
The Patterson administration has been too clever by half. By selling to Beal Bank they have materially altered the contract of every FINSAC debtor. Collections may not be so easy if Jamaicans stand up for justice.
