THE EDITOR, Sir:WHENEVER AN election draws near, there is renewed concern for the poor. Enormous sums of money - previously unavailable - is found to address this problem.
My concern on this occasion was significantly increased when it was announced that the funds, this time, would be taken from pension funds to lend to persons interested in starting small business. The reasons for my concern are:
(1) Pensions funds represent the savings of workers, throughout their working life, which are made available to them at a time when illness, age and ageism make it virtually impossible to rejoin the workforce.(2) Poverty is a deep, dark, bottomless pit. Its origins are more psycho-social than financial. Money thrown at it is money thrown away. To spend more money this way would be to ignore the many lessons of history.(3) The rate of failure in small businesses - even in developed countries - is extremely high. In Jamaica, the person starting a small business is faced with considerably more challenges. Public utilities are expensive and unreliable; the pool from which workers can be drawn is largely untrained and poorly-educated; transportation, mainly because of the poor condition of the road network, is expensive, and technical assistance would be difficult to organise. Finally, increasingly active hurricane seasons reduce the options for those contemplating agriculture.Once this new floodgate is opened, who can tell what the next requirement of the poor will cost in 2011, or whenever the next election will be called. Pension funds, by their very nature, must be invested in long-term, low-risk instruments - not high-risk schemes with a universally high mortality rate. The thinking of our people, when money is handed to them by a government agency before an election or promised to them shortly thereafter, is that it is either compensation for past loyalty or a downpayment on future support. Our pensioners should not be forced to contribute to this scheme.
Ordinary citizens need to make their voices heard on this matter. No politician is going to risk his/her popularity by being thought of as not loving the poor. The most potent antidote for poverty is a sound education which has, infused in it, a serious attempt at changing the way we think.
I am, etc.,
GLENN TUCKER
Stony Hill, Kingston 9
