Kali­fa Clyne

One adult liv­ing on less than around TT$1,230 per month is con­sid­ered to be liv­ing be­low the pover­ty line in T&T.

This is ac­cord­ing to a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion ar­rived at by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and ap­plied to the Sur­vey of Liv­ing Con­di­tions (2014).

The pover­ty line rep­re­sents the amount an in­di­vid­ual needs to meet ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties, de­scribed as a com­bi­na­tion of the min­i­mum ex­pen­di­ture need­ed for a nu­tri­tion­al­ly ad­e­quate di­et as well as the amount need­ed for ba­sic non-food ne­ces­si­ties.

In 2005, this fig­ure was TT$655 but was ad­just­ed for in­fla­tion in 2012.

For the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in­ter­viewed by the Guardian in four com­mu­ni­ties in T&T over the past few weeks, TT$1,230 was a lit­tle less than the amount they spent on food.

"That's how much I spend on food for the month, for me and my two boys," said 34-year-old, Aneesa Jantie, a sin­gle moth­er who earns $3,600 a month work­ing as an ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant at a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion.

She lives in a two-bed­room apart­ment in Arou­ca and her out­ward ap­pear­ance to peo­ple on the street may sug­gest that she lives com­fort­ably, but the on­ly fur­ni­ture in her apart­ment is a sec­ond-hand fridge and stove, do­nat­ed by a fam­i­ly mem­ber, and two mat­tress­es, one for her and one for her boys.

The fam­i­ly's clothes, which she wash­es by hand, sits in garbage bags on the floor, be­cause plans to pur­chase more fur­ni­ture were de­layed by her chil­dren get­ting ill, or need­ing mon­ey to par­tic­i­pate in school ac­tiv­i­ties and school pay­ments for her­self.

She al­so jug­gles her bills, pay­ing some one month and oth­ers an­oth­er month.

"My boys asked me, mom­my are we poor? I was shocked. For a while, I didn't know what to tell them. I even­tu­al­ly told them that we weren't poor, but that things were hard for us right now re­gard­ing mon­ey. They no­tice things though, like drink­ing wa­ter with sug­ar cause we have no milk or go­ing to school with a hole in the soles of their shoes be­cause I have no mon­ey to buy an­oth­er pair right now."

Pover­ty and Women

Stephanie Leitch, di­rec­tor of Wom­antra, a fem­i­nist, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tion, said women are chal­lenged by pover­ty on lev­els that are greater than men.

"The poor­est peo­ple through­out the world are women and chil­dren. I think it could be even worse lo­cal­ly, where there is less op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­tre­pre­neur­ship."

Leitch said women take on the brunt of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for care of fam­i­lies, de­pen­dents and el­der­ly, which leaves them at risk for the ef­fects of pover­ty.

"The Caribbean has the high­est ma­jor­i­ty of sin­gle par­ent fam­i­lies, and these fam­i­lies are led by women. It means the pover­ty has wors­ened. A lot of times they do not have the sup­port of male rel­a­tives who sup­port their chil­dren. They are in charge of most of the care and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. They are over­looked for jobs be­cause of child rear­ing, they are asked ques­tions: If they are mar­ried? How re­cent­ly? If they have kids? These ques­tions can de­ter­mine whether they even get a job."

She said work­ing sin­gle moth­ers of­ten had to take time off to take care of fam­i­ly needs, which can have an im­pact on salaries.

Re­cent­ly, the Min­istry of Gen­der launched a pro­gramme for low-in­come women, to teach them life skills such as plant­i­ng a gar­den.

Leitch said it was a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing stock of what was go­ing on.

For Jantie, try­ing to im­prove her fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion presents many ob­sta­cles.

She left the fa­ther of her chil­dren be­cause of his abuse. To­day he has no con­tact with the chil­dren and she has no idea where he is.

She ap­plied for gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance but was told that she had to find the fa­ther of her chil­dren. Rather than ex­pose her­self to fur­ther abuse, she de­clined.

"We are mak­ing out though. The boys go to school. I go to school and work and even­tu­al­ly we will have a bet­ter life. I will be able to pro­vide for their needs."

She makes sure her boys eat every night, al­though most nights the meals are the same, roast bake and plan­tain, but­ter or cheese.

T&T work­ing on de­creas­ing pover­ty

At a Unit­ed Na­tions re­view in ear­ly may, T&T Am­bas­sador Eden Charles told re­view­ers T&T had con­tin­u­ous­ly ad­dressed ex­treme lev­els of pover­ty.

"In light of the gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment at the last Uni­ver­sal Pe­ri­od­ic Re­view to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tion to com­bat ex­treme pover­ty, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment (now known as the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices) has em­barked on sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to en­sure that per­sons of low in­come and be­low the pover­ty line have ac­cess to ba­sic goods and ser­vices," Charles said.

He said the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP) was a so­cial in­ter­ven­tion strat­e­gy that was es­tab­lished to pro­vide as­sis­tance and to bring so­cio-eco­nom­ic re­lief to vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies.

"These ser­vices in­clude im­prov­ing wa­ter sup­plies, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and light­ing of com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties, house wiring as­sis­tance, pro­vi­sion of ma­te­ri­als for san­i­tary plumb­ing and mi­nor house re­pair as­sis­tance."

Charles al­so list­ed the Bio­met­ric Smart Card Sys­tem which will al­low peo­ple on Se­nior Cit­i­zens' Pen­sion,

Pub­lic As­sis­tance and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grants to uti­lize their cards to pur­chase food from par­tic­i­pat­ing mer­chants uti­liz­ing the bio­met­ri­cal­ly en­abled Point of Sale Ter­mi­nals as a mea­sure be­ing de­vel­oped by Gov­ern­ment to help the poor.

More Da­ta Need­ed

The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank es­ti­mates pover­ty lev­els in the re­gion at 21 per cent.

Mea­sur­able, com­pa­ra­ble da­ta for coun­tries across the re­gion, how­ev­er, are vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent, as na­tion­al sur­veys use very dif­fer­ent base lines and take place dur­ing dif­fer­ent time pe­ri­ods, where there may be dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

The da­ta in Ta­ble 1 can­not be com­pared due to vari­a­tions in pur­chas­ing pow­er for each na­tion and the base line used to de­ter­mine pover­ty lev­els. In Ba­hamas the base line for the an­nu­al pover­ty line since the last record­ed study, in 2001, moved from BSD$2,863 to BSD $4,247.

The re­duc­tion of pover­ty is the first of 20 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals signed on to by T&T at the Unit­ed Na­tions in 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive Richard Ble­witt, T&T has been func­tion­ing with­out a pol­i­cy for pover­ty re­duc­tion and is on­ly now tak­ing steps to es­tab­lish a firm pol­i­cy.

In an in­ter­view with the Guardian, Ble­witt said the UNDP had part­nered with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and was run­ning sev­er­al pover­ty di­a­logues in both Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"Un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, it was hard to get trac­tion on a pol­i­cy on pover­ty. Un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion it is dif­fer­ent, there seems to be a fo­cus on pover­ty re­duc­tion.

"The idea is to build a na­tion­al pover­ty strat­e­gy for the coun­try."

Ble­witt said he was op­ti­mistic that a pover­ty pol­i­cy could be de­vel­oped with­in the next four or five months.

"I know the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing on a mit­i­ga­tion strat­e­gy dur­ing the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and we are will­ing to of­fer tech­ni­cal sup­port."

Ble­witt said while mon­ey had been spent on so­cial pro­grammes over the years, what was need­ed was more ef­fec­tive tar­get­ing of as­sis­tance and a strat­e­gy which ad­dressed pover­ty com­pre­hen­sive­ly.

This strat­e­gy should in­clude mul­ti-di­men­sion­al pover­ty re­search, with a mea­sur­ing bas­ket of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties which would in­clude ac­cess to prop­er ed­u­ca­tion for chil­dren, dis­abil­i­ties, health­care and nu­tri­tion, among oth­er things.

He said the coun­try had a his­to­ry of look­ing at pover­ty in terms of in­come.

"The Sur­vey of Liv­ing Con­di­tions is not as com­pre­hen­sive as a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al mea­sur­ing tool, which is more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and use­ful to pol­i­cy mak­ers and pro­vides a clear­er pic­ture of pover­ty.

Across Trinidad, peo­ple avoid us­ing the word poor and re­sist the idea that they are liv­ing in pover­ty.

In­stead they use words and phras­es like "get­ting by," "need a lit­tle help," "hus­tling."

In the words of 22-year-old Kings Wharf res­i­dent, Mar­vin Vic­tor: "We not poor but we strug­gling,"

Vic­tor spoke to the Guardian, while sit­ting on fad­ed plas­tic chairs, out­side of the 16-by-20 foot wood­en house he shares with his par­ents.

The house, not much big­ger than some bed­rooms, was shared by his par­ents and two oth­er sib­lings grow­ing up.

"I mean, it hard, but I'm not go­ing to use the word poor. I wouldn't use that word."

While he may not use the word, Vic­tor's cir­cum­stances and in­come, shared among the mem­bers of his house­hold, could mean he is liv­ing close to the pover­ty line in T&T.

The Sur­vey of Liv­ing Con­di­tions (2014) which shows an in­crease in pover­ty from 16.5 per cent to al­most 25 per cent, al­so de­tails the de­mo­graph­ics of peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty in T&T.

The sur­vey has not yet been laid in Par­lia­ment, but is ex­pect­ed to in­form gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy aimed at de­creas­ing pover­ty lev­els across the coun­try.

Vic­tor, like many oth­er res­i­dents liv­ing on the wa­ter's edge, a few min­utes away from San Fer­nan­do's bus ter­mi­nal and wa­ter taxi, works in the fish­ing de­pot.

His job in­cludes dis­trib­ut­ing fish to gro­ceries in the area, but sit­ting at home around mid­day with a fe­male friend, he ad­mits work has slowed down.

When it isn't slow, Vic­tor says he makes about $1,000 a week, the ma­jor­i­ty of which goes to­wards pur­chas­ing food for him and his par­ents.

"Food more im­por­tant than any­thing else. For the three of us, about 700 per week goes to­ward food. I try to save a lit­tle bit but with the way work slowed down it's hard."

His food bill in­cludes the oc­ca­sion­al fast food pur­chase as well as lux­u­ries like al­co­hol.

Vic­tor's fam­i­ly doesn't pay ca­ble, In­ter­net or elec­tric­i­ty bills be­cause they have none. Like most peo­ple in the vil­lage, they use can­dles or lamps.

The vil­lage on­ly re­cent­ly re­ceived a shared wa­ter tank, pri­or to elec­tions, when their vote was be­ing court­ed by San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi. The vil­lage is al­so sit­u­at­ed in the area des­ig­nat­ed for de­vel­op­ment of a San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project.

"I need to see him. You know how much ap­point­ment I have to make to see that man. For elec­tion he didn't make any ap­point­ment to see me. He say he would pass through.

"I want the same things as every­body else, a house, car, to not be strug­gling all the time. I want bet­ter than this."

Vic­tor was born at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and grew up on the wharf. His play­ground was the over­grown bush­es, the un­even road­way and the ocean, 15 feet away from his front door.

"It wasn't bad, we just al­ways need­ed things."

The need for ba­sic things like food, clothes, and shoes to go to school or mon­ey to use for med­ical pur­chas­es was al­ways present.

Af­ter at­tend­ing Cof­fee Boys Pri­ma­ry School and Mara­bel­la Ju­nior Sec­ondary, Vic­tor left school at the age of 12 and got a job clean­ing fish, so he could help out with fam­i­ly needs and fend for him­self.

Econ­o­mist says spend­ing in­equitable

With over TT$25 bil­lion spent on so­cial pro­grammes in the past year, and sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in un­em­ploy­ment, the ques­tion aris­es as to how pover­ty could in­crease so dras­ti­cal­ly.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, for­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie de­scribed the fig­ure as ridicu­lous and im­pos­si­ble but econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon says it boils down to an in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.

"It may be that the mon­ey is on­ly find­ing its way to cer­tain sec­tors, so that while wealth is in­creas­ing for some peo­ple, oth­ers are not ben­e­fit­ing," Ar­joon said in an in­ter­view.

"Peo­ple who work in cer­tain sec­tors like the en­er­gy in­dus­try will re­ceive more than some­one in an­oth­er sec­tor, so it is not a sur­prise that there are high lev­els of pover­ty."

On the banks of a swamp in Or­toire Vil­lage, The­cla Williams stays at home to take care of her dis­abled son and sev­en oth­er chil­dren, one of whom is her grand­daugh­ter.

Williams, who has no one else to look af­ter her dis­abled son, re­ceives a grant of $1,800 per month from the State.

To sup­ple­ment this, she digs up chip chip from the Ma­yaro shore to sell on the road­way. On some days, Williams sells brooms which she makes at home.

"Some­times I have no mon­ey to send them to school, so they don't go to school. I had to take my grand­daugh­ter from where she was liv­ing be­cause they were abus­ing her but that made things hard­er be­cause the Cepep job that I was do­ing then, the con­trac­tor let go all the work­ers."

She is squat­ting on gov­ern­ment land and fre­quent­ly com­plains to her neigh­bour be­cause runoff from his cesspit runs un­der and at the side of her wood­en house.

"He doesn't care. He said I'm a squat­ter and I have no rights but it was ei­ther live here or be home­less on the streets."