By Marjorie A. Stair, Bureau ChiefST. VINCENT and the Grenadines is a small country, just about the size of Hanover and with a population of just over 100,000. The island of St Vincent is hilly and some of the small portion of flat lands in the country has been reclaimed from the sea. It is solely dependent on agriculture and tourism with its most important natural resources being its rich, deep volcanic soils on the mainland of St Vincent and the white sand beaches of the Grenadine islands, the most famous of which, Mustique, is privately owned.
Like the rest of the Caribbean, St Vincent and the Grenadines, has a history of plantation agriculture. The project I managed, there, from 1998 to 2001, was the third and final phase of a Land Reform Programme, which had as its primary objective, the re-distribution of estate lands to smaller farmers. The property, in question, having the most beautiful beach on the mainland St Vincent, there were also attempts by the Government to divest a section of the property for the development of a tourism resort and the project had a tourism component.
St Vincent and the Grenadines, like the other banana producing countries in the Windward Islands and elsewhere, has made bold attempts to diversify its economy and, by the time I got there in 1998, was earning more from tourism than it was from agriculture. Building on the success of Mustique, which targets the upper scale of the tourism market - the rich and famous seeking privacy and a place where they are free to enjoy their holiday without being hounded by either the press or local citizens, the tourism income of the country has grown steadily, supported by a booming sailing tourism niche market.
The per capita income of St Vincent and the Grenadines is approximately twice that of Jamaica, despite its very limited resources and small size, as compared to us. Why this little piece on this small Caribbean country?
Sir James Mitchell, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines at the time I lived there, lives in the Grenadine island of Bequia. You travel to Bequia either by public transportation viz. the ferry or air; or by privately owned aircraft or boats. Sir James Mitchell used to travel primarily on the ferry between Bequia and St Vincent, usually coming to St Vincent on the first ferry leaving Bequia in the morning. It is not unusual to see either Sir James or the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, shopping in the supermarket or even in the fish or produce market. Coming from Jamaica, I found this very interesting because, somehow, I was never able to imagine, our Prime Minister, the Honourable P.J. Patterson, travelling on public transportation, when the country has a Coast Guard which could both secure and transport him and/or privately owned boats and aircraft that could be made available to him and his team.
This leads me to the current issue of salary and steps now being taken by the Bank of Jamaica to reduce liquidity.
I find it ironic that it is the party of Michael Manley that has found itself, along with the JLP Opposition of course who meekly accepted their salary increases without a murmur of consideration about affordability or other such considerations, embroiled in this issue. Those of us who were alive in the peak of the Michael Manley days will remember that one of his favourite speeches addressed the disparity between the earnings of top management and common labourer, as he graphically questioned, in his own dramatic style, how could one justify receiving payment that was a thousand times more than that received by another. The members of his party are now the new 'backras', living the lifestyle of the plantation owner, or seeking to do so!
The funds used to pay a 103 per cent increase to sixty Parliamentarians, a partial payment by the way, is half of what is needed to pay 23,000 teachers the decrease in salary that they have been offered by the Government. Do your mathematics. If the inflation rate is 9 per cent and your income increases by 3 per cent, in essence your salary has declined by 6 per cent, as the inflation rate means that you need 9 per cent more income to purchase the same goods and services that you were able to purchase a year before.
The fact is that the linking of public sector salaries to private sector salaries, in an economy like Jamaica where private sector salaries, at both ends of the scale, are not necessarily linked to productivity, is senseless and can only create tremendous and unnecessary pressure on the already inadequate national budget both now and in the future. Salaries should only be based on two things - affordability and performance, in that order. How are you going to peg the salary of a Permanent Secretary of, for example, the Ministry of Agriculture - a sector that has seen serious decline; or any Permanent Secretary for that matter, in an economy that has seen precious little growth in anything but debt over the past decade and a half, to the CEO of Grace Kennedy, a company that has grown and increased its profitability over the same period. The answer is simple. You cannot, and if you do, then the country is going to fall into a deeper hole than it is in already. The whole thing is based on a false and dangerous paradigm that should have been discarded from Day One.
To which private sector group are you now going to peg teachers' salaries? And where will the money come from to pay this 80 per cent of private sector salary to teachers if you are unable to pay them an increase based on the inflation rate today? And, by the way, what of the education tax in all of this? Remember, the 2.5 per cent of our salaries that we pay that should have been used to pay increases in teachers' salaries?
A syndrome of unrealistic expectations plagues Jamaica. This is rooted in the pervasive and lucrative narcotics drugs trade, and the lifestyle of its leaders, which now sets the standard for the society. Many, unwilling to become drug dealers, secretly or openly desire to live the lifestyle of the Don. The Member of Parliament, regardless of his level of income or lifestyle before entering politics, immediately takes on the responsibility of sending other people's children to school, burying other people's dead, and maintaining a lifestyle of a wealthy person. Not for him the Bequia ferry, like Sir James. No sah, MP a fi live a certain way. And ways and means have to be found to afford him this new lifestyle, whether or not he is effectively representing his constituents, or the country can afford it.
What a day when we wake up and face the reality of Jamaica. Something must be very wrong with us if a tiny country like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with fewer resources than we have, can enjoy twice our per capita income! Of course, one of the advantages of the Eastern Caribbean is that they have an independent central bank that has managed to maintain a very stable foreign exchange rate for several years.
