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Friday, February 28, 2025

Curbing escalating poverty in rich T & T

by

20110115

The re­cent heavy rain and sub­se­quent flood­ing that oc­curred through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go high­lights not on­ly the poor, dan­ger­ous in­fra­struc­ture (roads, bridges, drains, canals, rivers) in the coun­try but more im­por­tant­ly the chron­ic pover­ty that peo­ple are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.It al­so high­lights the shod­dy, dan­ger­ous hous­es (shacks) in which so many im­pov­er­ished cit­i­zens of this oil and gas rich coun­try live. Due to their pro­longed des­ti­tute state and eco­nom­ic hard­ships, many cit­i­zens are strug­gling to sur­vive on a dai­ly ba­sis and nat­ur­al events like flood­ing on­ly pro­pels their so­cio-eco­nom­i­cal con­di­tions in­to the pub­lic's do­main.

Pover­ty and pover­ty re­lat­ed con­di­tions have not re­ceived se­ri­ous gov­ern­men­tal in­ter­ven­tion in the past, and de­spite the PNM gov­ern­ment spend­ing bil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars to build in­com­plete, emp­ty mas­sive build­ings in Port-of-Spain, their host­ing of the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in 2009-mon­ey that may nev­er be re­cov­ered-poor peo­ple in the coun­try are suf­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly since they do not have the fi­nan­cial re­sources to off­set the high cost of liv­ing, in­creas­ing food prices, in­creas­ing trans­porta­tion costs, un­em­ploy­ment and the low min­i­mum wage that many of them re­ceive.

The pover­ty line (thresh­old) in Trinidad and To­ba­go is $2,660 per month for a fam­i­ly of four peo­ple. Now, in all hon­esty, can a fam­i­ly of four sur­vive on such mea­ger earn­ings? Even with a pro­ject­ed in­crease in the min­i­mum wage from $9 to $12.50 an hour, it is not ex­pect­ed that dra­mat­ic changes would be made to this fam­i­ly's lifestyle since a 40-hour a week salary at $12.50 an hour is worth on­ly $2,000 a month, which is still be­low the pover­ty line for a fam­i­ly of four peo­ple.

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters (present and past) have stat­ed that 17 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion are liv­ing in pover­ty, down from 34 per cent in 1992 (but 17 per cent is un­der­stat­ed as re­al pover­ty is clos­er to 30 per cent) since squat­ters, the home­less, stu­dents, taxi dri­vers, maxi taxi dri­vers, hus­tlers, part-time em­ploy­ees like Cepep, URP...are not in­clud­ed in the above sta­tis­ti­cal con­fig­u­ra­tion.Even un­em­ploy­ment is bad­ly un­der­stat­ed and the 7 per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate hov­ers more around 25 per cent when one fac­tors in all the per­ti­nent un­em­ploy­ment fac­tors and count all the un­em­ployed par­tic­i­pants not in the labour force.

Six­ty per cent of the peo­ple em­ployed in Trinidad and To­ba­go earn less than $3,999 per month and 37 per cent earn less than $1,999 per month. A star­tling 11 per cent earn less than $500 per month and on­ly 2 per cent earn $13,000 and more per month. This in­for­ma­tion may be fright­en­ing to many and if you do not be­lieve me, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice would ver­i­fy their da­ta.

In my lat­est study of squat­ting in Trinidad, 76 per cent of the squat­ters were un­em­ployed and on­ly 24 per cent em­ployed. The oc­cu­pa­tions of the em­ployed were labour­er, do­mes­tic work­er, seam­stress etc. On­ly 19 per cent worked 35-40 hours a week and the ma­jor­i­ty (45 per cent) earned less than $500 a week. Twen­ty per cent re­ceived fi­nan­cial help from NIS, pub­lic as­sis­tance and their chil­dren's fa­thers, while 22 per cent re­ceived less than $500 a week from oth­er sources. In the home­less pop­u­la­tion, all (100 per cent) of the home­less were un­em­ployed and a few earned char­i­ty for per­form­ing odd jobs for ven­dors.

When one in­cludes the se­nior cit­i­zens and the $3,000-a-month pen­sion they re­ceive and the se­nior cit­i­zens who for what­ev­er rea­son do not qual­i­fy for a pen­sion (many are re­turn­ing se­niors from for­eign coun­tries), the many young, store and oth­er ser­vice sec­tor em­ploy­ees whose earn­ings range from $10 to $20 an hour, and the thou­sands of low wage se­cu­ri­ty guards who earn from $12 to $20 an hour, the pic­ture is ab­solute­ly clear that many of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are liv­ing in pover­ty and do not fore­see (any­time in the near fu­ture) get­ting out of that pover­ty.

For them, em­ploy­ment is not a panacea to their pover­ty woes as they have to work long hours (usu­al­ly 50-60 hours) in or­der to ob­tain a rea­son­able salary (af­ter tax­es). This is fur­ther com­pound­ed by the bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion of sin­gle, poor­ly ed­u­cat­ed women with chil­dren who do not see mar­riage as an op­tion for them and thus have to strug­gle to earn an in­come to sup­port their chil­dren since the chil­dren's fa­thers may have lost in­ter­est in both moth­er and chil­dren and do not sup­port ei­ther.The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, in its first bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, stat­ed that they will ad­dress the plight of the poor, dis­ad­van­taged and vul­ner­a­ble and made pro­jec­tions to re­duce the num­ber of poor peo­ple in the coun­try by 2 per cent each year.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, it was not stat­ed how this pover­ty re­duc­tion rate would be re­alised. Past PNM gov­ern­ments had al­so tar­get­ed re­duc­ing the grow­ing in­ci­dence of pover­ty in the coun­try, but in­stead of re­duc­ing it, pover­ty has in­creased at alarm­ing rates.The past PNM gov­ern­ments al­so guar­an­teed a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing for all the cit­i­zens of T&T in­clud­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble in its many bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions in its crawl to 2020 Vi­sion sta­tus.

In or­der to ac­com­plish this goal of re­duc­ing the pover­ty rate, the PP Gov­ern­ment must iden­ti­fy the re­al num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty in the coun­try and then work to­wards de­creas­ing the pover­ty pop­u­la­tion. Any oth­er ap­proach would be fu­tile and the on­ly de­sired out­come in serv­ing the peo­ple would be to use hon­est, ac­cu­rate, re­al sta­tis­tics in or­der to de­crease, con­tain and con­trol the es­ca­lat­ing pover­ty that has en­gulfed the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go for such a long pe­ri­od of time.

If the PP Gov­ern­ment se­ri­ous­ly wants to re­duce pover­ty, spe­cial em­pha­sis must be placed on as­sist­ing the young, se­nior cit­i­zens, women with chil­dren, cit­i­zens with dis­abil­i­ties and the chron­i­cal­ly un­em­ployed and un­der­em­ployed cit­i­zens and res­i­dents of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Dr L Trevor Grant is the au­thor of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly: Squat­ting in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Avail­able at Web site www.drlt­grant.com


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