- RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
A police officer escorts four men to the Central Police Station in downtown Kingston last month. Many young men find themselves on the wrong side of the law. There is a lot that $896 million could do to put these youths on a much stronger foundation.
Don Robotham, Gleaner Writer
THE BRITISH Government, through its development co-operation agency - the Department for International Development (DfID) - has announced a project grant and debt relief to Jamaica of £24 million.
This money is to be spent largely on social programmes over a three-year period. Given our urgent needs and our severe budgetary constraints, this significant grant is to be welcomed.
If we really wish to show our gratitude to the British, it would be best to do this in practical ways. What we need is for sections of the private sector to put up matching funds and thus to generate a really substantial pool of additional social funds.
Those who don't have funds but have skills can volunteer their labour and their time.
The question this raises, however, is how to use any such funds and volunteer effort to ensure that they have maximum positive effects. This is partly DfID's responsibility, but actually it is mainly ours.
Will we, as we have done in the past, simply eat out the DfID and any other moneys and have little or nothing to show for it at the end?
We cry out constantly for social assistance funds but what happens when we get some? An enormous responsibility rests on the political leadership of both parties, our social agencies and all Jamaicans to ensure that every penny of these new funds is well used and accounted for.
PAST EXPERIENCE
In the past, Jamaica has received generous social assistance from developed countries - the United States and the Netherlands, in particular.
For 20 years, between the 1970s and the 1990s, the development cooperation agencies in the Netherlands poured millions of good Dutch guilders into Jamaica for poverty alleviation, micro-enterprise development, health and training.
Not all of this money was wasted, but the results achieved were very mixed, to put it politely.
I would strongly advise DfID to ask the Dutch to give them a look at their files on this subject before they proceed too far down the road. We simply cannot afford to repeat our past mistakes.
The funds from the British government will come in two parts: The direct grant funds are £7.5 million; the remainder is made up of £16.5 million in debt relief.
The funds will be spread over a three-year period in approximately equal amounts each year.
It is not clear from press reports if the £16.5 million in debt relief will simply vanish into the Consolidated Fund, or whether they will be clearly set aside in a special development fund and merged with the direct grant.
I assume they will be earmarked solely for development purposes, or what would be the point?
If this is the case, it means that, thanks to the British government, we shall have an additional £8 million (J$896 million) per year to spend on social programmes.
FOR COMMUNITY SAFETY
Press reports indicate that the funds are to be used "chiefly in the areas of community safety and security, and improving access to public services."
It is further reported that some of the funds are to "go towards Government's new Community Security Initiative which although still in development, is intended to provide greater access to public services in crime 'hot-spot' areas.
These vague statements must fill us all with great anxiety. What is meant by "improving access to public services"? Whose access? Which services? Delivered by whom to whom, for how much and in return for what?
Some hard and realistic thinking is needed here. Is the idea simply to use the existing broken political-administrative machinery, suitably parceled up between the political parties, to distribute some more scarce benefits and spoils, disguised as "improved access to public services"?
Or is the idea to use this rare opportunity to chart a new course in social development through fresh institutions in civil society? The answer to these questions will not be found in the words of various spokespersons but in their deeds. Full transparency and the utmost vigilance from the media and civil society are called for.
HELPING 'TRYING' YOUTHS AND BUSINESSES
We should make it our priority to target who I call 'trying youths' and 'trying businesses'.
One thing which is absolutely clear from the Dutch experience is this: One must distinguish clearly between assistance which is giveaway social relief and assistance which is meant to have a sustainable economic and social result.
Micro-credit programmes generally in Jamaica have fallen into the first category. Hustling and 'ginnalship' are not the same thing as business acumen. Rather than attempting to turn hustlers into business persons, far better to target successful small and medium-size business which have already proved their potential. Look for businesses which are already working and poor youth who are already trying and help those.
Our poorest populations are rural, not urban, and our highest unemployment rates are in rural townships and in the countryside (over 20 per cent), not in Kingston and Montego Bay (about 14 per cent).
Yet it is youth in Kingston and Montego Bay whom we must target for assistance. Within these areas, our aim should not necessarily be to assist the unemployed poorest youth as the first priority.
We should look for those youth who are already employed but insufficiently educated and trained and, therefore, insufficiently productive and insufficiently paid. This is our youth leadership and role models whom, if we strengthen, will lead the rest forward. They are not in any party group nor do they want to be. They are not area leaders or dons or 'shottas'. But they are the backbone of our future.
We have about 486,000 young people in the 15-24 age group. My estimate is that this key leadership group of what I call 'trying youths' is about seven per cent of the total or about 35,000 people. There is a lot that J$896 million per year could do to put these 35,000 youth on a much stronger foundation with lasting social and economic consequences. This would include not just technical, vocational and business training and certification, but also moral and civic education.
But none of this can be accomplished if we go through the existing political-administrative channels. We have to use the occasion to construct new institutions, rooted more broadly in civil society and outside of the pressures of direct partisan politics. A separate body with its own board and administrative and project apparatus is needed.
This body could draw on existing expertise in bodies such as the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) or even be an expanded and modified JSIF with a somewhat different board and set of reporting relationships to take account of the funding sources and a broader civic accountability. We should treat the British grant not as an opportunity to pour some new wine into the old poisoned bottles. Fresh new bottles are needed.
