DR. RALPH Thompson's suggestion, as reported in yesterday's Gleaner, of using revenue from gambling to fund the reforms recommended by the prime minister's task force on education is interesting, but of dubious merit.
He has suggested that for ten years the government's proceeds from the lottery companies should be allocated to education rather than sport. Dr. Thompson has gone further and called on government to exercise leadership in permitting the introduction of casino gambling as one of Jamaica's tourist attractions, with government's revenue from casinos to be split 50 per cent to the tourist industry and 50 per cent to education.
The task force has calculated that some $50 billion will be needed to upgrade the physical infrastructure of schools in the public domain as well as an additional amount of some $23 billion for recurrent expenditure. Another committee has been set up to identify funding to get the job done and it is to this committee that Dr. Thompson has directed his challenge.
The idea of using the proceeds from gambling for education is not an original one as Dr. Thompson himself has acknowledged but we think there are several problems with it. Any policy of funding education on games of chance that are dependent on the fickleness of gamblers is dangerous. The idea that there would be a constant and reliable source of revenue based on the gamblers' addiction, may be overly optimistic. There are many studies from the United States which show that the predicted economic boon in cities based on spin-offs from gambling centres often do not materialise.
Also, bearing in mind that many of Jamaica's schools are still grant-aided "church-schools", and the difficulties many church leaders have with gambling as a means of "honestly-earned" income, it is easily predictable that there would be confrontation over this as a source of funding.
To date, the government has not been able to make available to the education system, funds that were deducted from employees salaries as an Education Tax. We note too, that despite recent promises in Parliament, the government has also not kept its word to allocate a specifically agreed percentage of the national budget to education. The size of the national debt and other considerations may well have mitigated against this being done, but what is to stop this from happening again after casinos have been given the green light on the premise that this would help education?
We make no moral arguments here on the merits or lack thereof of casinos especially given the many other games of chance in Jamaica. Using education as the fulcrum to get casinos more fully operational in Jamaica may well defuse the opposition. But whatever the positive spin-offs of introducing casino gambling as an attraction for tourists, it is not the answer to the under-funding of Jamaica's education system.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
