It might be the high profile the media has given to people living in disadvantaged circumstances, or it might have something to do with the vigour that Minister of the People and Social Development has brought to addressing the precariously poor or it might simply be that in times of relative plenty, it's embarrassing to realise that as many as 200,000 citizens are living below sustainable levels, but awareness of poverty is rising in Trinidad and Tobago.
Each of those influences is likely to have encouraged concern about poverty in the country, and an average of 78 per cent of those surveyed in a recent ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre poll indicated that poverty remains a major problem in T&T. The nightly dance of revelation and response that plays out during televised news has undoubtedly led to a heightened awareness of what being truly poor looks like, while simultaneously offering an opportunity for the Government to demonstrate engagement and caring by addressing these reports with dispatch.
The investment in dealing with the poor has been substantial. Social Development Minister Glenn Ramadharsingh has both visibly empathised with the underprivileged and liberally spent taxpayers' money on the problem, injecting a sum estimated at between two and three billion dollars on relief programmes over the last 22 months.
Minister Ramadharsingh is expecting that a survey of living conditions in T&T, commissioned in 2011, at a cost of $4 million, will provide evidence of the effectiveness of the sums spent on the national poverty-reduction strategy. Other monitoring and evaluation strategies are being contemplated to ensure that the social interventions are effective and are giving the disadvantaged a chance to survive their circumstances, to develop the necessary skills to provide for themselves and their families and to return to productive, confident engagement with society.
The challenges facing citizens on the margins of society are considerable. Largely undereducated, they must compete in a job market with steadily growing numbers of formally schooled workers. People managing substance dependencies are expected to perform in an environment with both considerable temptations and insufficient support environments dedicated to living dry and drug-free.
Unhealthy, unsafe and dangerous living environments endanger families at the most basic survival levels, and despite robust spending by the Social Development Ministry and the public generosity of Minister Ramadharsingh, these are not problems that can be solved by food cards and temporary allocations of HDC housing.
Aside from the visibly poor, Dr Ronald Marshall, senior lecturer at UWI's Department of Behavioural Sciences, notes that the percentage of citizens living wildly beyond their means is probably much higher than we suspect. He described this poverty as "masked" by the unsustainable chasing of the accoutrements of wealth by people with no savings, pensions or nest eggs.
Financial literacy and cash management competence should become part of any serious effort being engaged by social services representatives, as are training programmes in life skills and personal development, but the success of such programmes in retraining and returning challenged citizens to productive engagement with society must also be measured.
Poverty, according to the last survey on living conditions in 2005, was set at an income level for a person or household of less than $665. The 2011 survey, which will need to account for inflation's impact on basic food items, is likely to set that level incrementally higher. The 2005 survey also found that education was a key element in poverty cases and there was a critical need to manage households that had dropped well below the $665 baseline.
As tempting as it is for Minister Ramadharsingh to position himself as a saviour in cases of extreme poverty highlighted by the media, he must also be guided by the old saying about teaching men to fish. The spending on poverty alleviation must focus on engagements with the problem that emphasise training and learning opportunities, encourage the self-respect that meaningful work offers and allow people to improve themselves through their own efforts.