Ronald Thwaites | The superficial and the profound

One of my objectives when serving in the Ministry of Education was to extend and transform the school feeding programme. There would be several advantages. Foremost would be to improve the attendance, behaviour and performance of the 200,000 schoolers who experience food insufficiency every day along with the equal number who suffer the same plight sometimes.

Just helping those students would go far to reversing the dismal PISA report on sub-optimal academic outcomes; assure higher productivity over time and be a more effective antidote to crime and violence than the measures we now employ. Think too about the health benefits if nutritional balance rather than fast food addiction was inculcated from early childhood.

Then there is the linkage with domestic agriculture which would receive a huge boost by reducing waste of excess production and expanding markets to serve 600,000 young Jamaicans. The economy of rural Jamaica, locus of persistent poverty, would be transformed and the bleed of foreign exchange could be reduced. Imagine the pride of a nation of parents able to feed their children and a government able to facilitate this.

IT FAILED

The effort largely failed. The Minister of Agriculture, Roger Clarke told me that it would take years to ramp up the required volumes of vegetables, starches and proteins to suffice. Even a pilot project would be hard to sustain.

Meanwhile the queue of importers were ready to sign licenses and promise contributions. Sufficient supplies for the next school term had to be procured immediately. No time to grow anything . Friends had to be satisfied. Warnings about interrupting well-established supply chains and credit lines were caustic: “What the hell do you think you are doing”? So, as it was in the beginning, is now and, apparently, ever shall be, the cheap imports of heavily subsidised raw food products flooded in, cramping local output and blighting countless young persons.

Last week’s remission of general consumption tax on imported raw food products just delivered a probably fatal blow to the local food producing sector, an unearned bonus to food importers and inevitable higher prices to all of us who try to keep our children fed.

It doesn’t make sense to give a child less than $1,200 a day for breakfast, lunch and bus fare. That’s 40 per cent of the typical single mother’s $15,000 weekly wage – for one child. I wonder if Mr Fitch and Mr Moody check for this reality when they salivate about Jamaica’s “prassperty”?

ARE OUR HANDS TIED?

Dr. Clarke says slitting the throat of local raw food producers is the unavoidable consequence of our World Trade Organization commitments. Really? I’ve been trying to find out what are our obligations under that treaty for years, without success – until now! And if high stamp duties are permissible protectionist imposts where taxes are not, who is fooling who?

By the way, is imported chicken meat classified as a raw food? What a pity the Jamaica Agricultural Society, once a powerful institution, has become emaciated. Farmers and consumers should rebel at what is happening. Aristotle said that politics is a moral enterprise. So is the conduct of the economy of which the national budget is a major part.

OTHER BUDGET ISSUES

“You are the cause” is Ed Bartlett’s reported good-natured jibe over government’s tedium at the Opposition’s mild questioning at the Standing Finance Committee. Backbenchers on the government side are useless as far as penetrating questioning of ministers is concerned. They have to be content to be geldings who applaud. They are witless conspirators in the irresponsible superficial charade of approving the spend of $1.3 trillion of their constituents money. That carelessness and cowardice alone should disqualify them from re-election.

The tax break for renewable energy producers is a very good move. So too are the apparently comprehensive plans to reform the PATH programme. $1.2 billion is allocated for the restoration of mined-out bauxite lands. But wasn’t it the extracting companies obligation to do so? Why do we have to pay for their neglect now that they have the ore and we remain poor?

Good news too that a board has been appointed for the National Identification Scheme after all the years of self-inflicted delays by the government . But how will NIDS work without an accurate census? How will we know how many to register and plan for? Most of the people I have asked have not seen a census taker. Minister Clarke has been misinformed. The field work is not nearly complete. But why not if so much money has been spent?

REAL PROGRESS

Last week I attended the annual stakeholders consultation of Quality Education Circle 1 where the achievements and challenges of 19 Kingston inner-city schools were reported on and assessed by parents, teachers, administrators and ministry officers. Scarcely noticed by the press and policy makers who, with the exception of Councillor Daniels, never bothered to attend, this is the make-or-break forum for the nation. The participants were honest about absenteeism, spotty teacher engagement, parental disinterest, pivotal leadership skills, improved literacy, dismal numeracy and shortage of science instructors at all levels. They made plan to improve.

While the rest of Jamaica was preoccupied with election nightmares, Carnival titivation and awaiting King Charles’ court to tell us what is justice, the enthusiasm, realism and commitment evident at that meeting is where real progress is brokered. We spend energy on the superficial and ignore the profound.

Not surprisingly 17 of the 19 schools comprising the QEC are owned or sponsored by Christian denominations. No government could pay these religious bodies for their historic and current investment. The proposed reform of the Education Act and the Education Regulations must enhance, not diminish, the partnership between the State and the Churches.

Finally, a word from the Bible to contrast our amoral and inhumane policy towards Haitians: “When an alien comes into your land, do not molest him. You shall treat him no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt. I, the Lord, am your God.” (Leviticus 19 v33)

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The WI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.