IN THE months following our last general elections and in the lead up to and during the current budget debate, a lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of economic and fiscal policy. Among the recommendations for the adoption of tighter fiscal discipline and the calls for the introduction of casino gambling, one theme has remained largely subdued, the place of economic morality in budget planning and the need to promote economic justice.
The government has responded to the current fiscal crisis with a sizeable increase in the revenue intake. This fiscal policy raises a significant moral question. Should the general public and particularly small producers in marginal enterprises have their taxes increased to maintain seventeen government ministries, a bloated civil service bureaucracy and a cohort of consultants, several of whom are failed electoral candidates rewarded for their loyalty to the party? There is a sordid stain of public immorality when a government demands economic sacrifice of citizens while it appropriates public resources to reward the party faithful. Can wage restraints be morally imposed on workers when parliamentarians on both sides of the bench have failed to voluntarily give up their wage increases?
GROSSLY IMMORAL
In The Sunday Gleaner of January 12, 2003, Earl Bartley referred to an estimate by a Finance Ministry official that public sector waste amounted to between three per cent and five per cent of government expenditure, or a range of $6 to $10 billion per year according to Bartley's calculation. It is grossly immoral for the level of economic sacrifice now being demanded of the Jamaican people to be imposed before effective anti-corruption legislation has been put in place. We urgently need more effective laws to investigate, prosecute and punish government ministers and top officials who have abused their fiduciary trust and used public office to enrich themselves and their friends instead of representing the interests of those who elected them. That is the least that can be done to justify the economic sacrifices that Jamaicans are now being called on to make as a result of the financial policies and lax controls on expenditure adopted by government in the past.
The demands of economic justice also extend to the priorities established by government in the formulation of economic policy. In the key tourism sector, the government has been urged to look to casino gambling.
This is a move that will principally benefit large local and overseas hotel owners providing jobs for primary school graduates as croupiers and bar maids. Similarly, public plans for the restoration of downtown Kingston accompanied, hopefully, by the introduction of cruise shipping will benefit principally the large merchants. They are the only entrepreneurs who will be able to afford the high rents that will have to be charged for tourist shops and boutiques in an attempt to recoup some of the costs of renovation.
NO SERIOUS THOUGHT
The restoration plans, however, give no serious thought to the development of the internationally best known piece of tourism real estate in Kingston, if not all of Jamaica, 'Trench Town'. The restoration and cleaning-up of the inner city areas as part of a Greater "Trench Town" would allow inner-city residents to take back their communities. With public assistance, they could release their entrepreneurial potential by establishing beauty salons, craft, fashion and food shops, fortune-telling studios and balm yards attached to their residences. They could sell their services as hair and fashion designers, musicians, artists, craft manufacturers and in a whole range of other enterprises to tourists wishing to take part in the Bob Marley and 'Trench Town' experience.
TRANSFORMATION
The transformation depicted on the cover of the Jamrite publication, The How to be Jamaican Handbook, could become an industry in itself giving inner-city dwellers a direct stake in the tourist economy. With such an economic investment in their communities, they will cease to be the allies and dependents of the extortionists and crime lords who control these areas and become their fiercest enemies.
Note that this is not a call for the retention of the old squatter shacks and poverty-stricken tenement yards that typify the area. It is an argument for a policy aimed at the development of a dynamic and entrepreneurial living community based on individual home ownership and incorporating the creative architectural styles and popular aesthetic unique to the area. This is a far cry from the current plans for constructing multi-storey apartment complexes that, without accompanying provisions for enhanced economic opportunities for their inhabitants, will become prison fortresses of poverty and despair within a decade.
The question has to be asked, who does this current government represent? Where are the plans that seek to foster the economic agency of the poor and dispossessed? Where is the economic policy that aims at releasing the entrepreneurial potential of the urban and rural poor? Economic justice demands a budget and an economic plan that has as its main focus the economic empowerment of poor and ordinary Jamaicans.
Comments to Jamaicans For Justice at ja.for.justice@mail. infochan.com or contact us at 755-4524-6.
