Oliver Clarke, Contributor

A VERY attractive element of saving within a life insurance policy is the long-term nature of the savings. Most of us find it easier to save if we know we are in a contract that requires a fixed amount to be put aside each month. It is that sense of knowing that you have to save each month that allows many of us to keep building that nest egg.

Keeping your savings with a building society is also convenient and attractive!

But, apart from touting life insurance and building society savings schemes I would like to talk about some other issues that can be bundled under the title of 'savings'.

Why not reward citizens who 'save' government resources?

Let's take the example of parents who ensure their children go to school every day.

Such a practice saves the public purse a lot of money - teachers have their full class to teach; school graduates are likely to be better educated and so more able to get jobs and pay taxes; children at school are less likely to be involved in crime. There are many other ways in which regular school attendance reduces the demand on other expensive government services.

So what's the reward being offered to those parents and or children for saving the Govern-ment money?

FORWARD-LOOKING GOVERNMENT

A forward-looking government might want to evaluate attendance records in determining who goes to good high schools.

A forward-looking government might want to evaluate attendance records in determining the interest rate offered on educational loans - for example a 98 per cent attendance record throughout school might qualify for an interest-free educational loan.

Let's take the example of parents (male or female) who pay the cost of their children's upbringing and education.

There appears to be a major current problem with fathers acting responsibly in registering their names on birth certificates and subsequently contributing to their children's life costs.

Maybe we should give a special tax benefit to fathers who acknowledge their children at birth. Although this benefit could be seen as one sided, I think there will be few mothers who wouldn't welcome the future security.

The Government is likely to benefit financially from this.

Let's take the example of communities that are crime free.

It must make sense to find a visible method of rewarding communities that use social pressure to reduce criminality, especially murder, assault, rape and other incidents of personal violence.

A forward-looking government might want to focus social spending in communities that have reduced the public costs of having to maintain a massive crime prevention operation.

The logic of this argument would see increased resources being made available to the responsible citizen and not allocated on say, the political allegiance of the community.

Responsible communities get no visible reward now.

Let's take the example of corruption. It would be easy to get unanimous support for the view that corruption should be punished and integrity rewarded. But the checks and balances that now exist do not encourage these important directions.

Our Commission for the Prevention of Corruption is, to date, an abject failure. The Corruption Prevention Act establishes the commission to perform a number of functions, including the receiving and keeping of records, statutory declarations furnished by public servants, and the examination of such statutory declarations.

The commission is also meant to make independent enquiries and investigations, receive and investigate any complaint regarding an act of corruption, and conduct an investigation into any act of corruption on its own initiative.

PROSECUTION FOR CORRUPTION

Our new Prime Minister has sensibly seen the need to give the commission greater autonomy and move it out of the Ministry of Finance.

However, I challenge anyone here in this important and informed audience to tell me of the individuals who have been prosecuted for corruption arising from the action of this commission?

Every act of corruption is one of 'dis-saving'. If funds allocated for a public purpose are redirected for personal benefit by an act of corruption, then savings are adversely affected ... as funding for the original purpose now needs to be replicated.

There are perceptions that corruption is alive and well in Jamaica. Every day there are rumours of ministers or police officers with disproportionately large homes, of the illicit price to be paid to obtain a driver's licence, of police charging amounts from drivers in lieu of tickets, of the 'fees' that need to be paid to obtain land subdivision approvals, of the misuse of land sales and hundreds of other examples.

Why are so few people held to account?

Every one of the above incidents cause scarce funds created by individual or public savings to be misapplied.

It is a national disgrace that our anti-corruption enforcement is so dreadfully inadequate.

THE PEACE DIVIDEND

There has been a great improvement in the regulation of financial companies through the Bank of Jamaica and the new Financial Institution Services (FIS). Regrettably, there has been no similar improvement in the regulation and auditing of public companies.

Why are all publicly-owned companies not obliged to follow the same procedures as those followed by companies quoted on the stock exchange to publish quarterly accounts, have audit committees, etc.?

The biggest saving of all is the peace dividend.

Crime absorbs so much of government funds, whether in paying for the security forces, maintaining the prisons, patching up the victims of violence in our hospitals - each year billions of dollars are spent dealing with the aftermath of crime. All of these funds could immediately be available to pay for schools, better salaries, better health care for the law-abiding citizen, if crime could only be reduced.

A government that does not give lots of resources to the process of reducing crime will never allow the country to reap the biggest public saving of all: the peace dividend.

Good luck to all of you at Guardian for having the courage to come and invest in Jamaica and for your skills in continuing to build a secure and attractive home for Jamaican savings.

The above address was made by Oliver Clarke on Monday May 29 at the 'Guardian Series' launch at the Hilton Kingston hotel in New Kingston.