"A poor man liv­ing in a twee­ny-wee­ny hut

The chil­dren hun­gry and noth­ing in the pot

He gone by the neigh­bour to beg for some rice

The neigh­bour un­der pres­sure, Boy, thing ent nice..."

These are some of the lyrics to the Mighty Shad­ow’s 1994 clas­sic ca­lyp­so "Pover­ty is Hell" which de­scribes the strug­gle peo­ple face in their dai­ly lives. More than 26 years af­ter this song was writ­ten, the lyrics still hold true to­day as T&T is wit­ness­ing one of its worst eco­nom­ic and so­cial crises since in­de­pen­dence.

From the po­lice hav­ing to dis­perse large hun­gry crowds wait­ing for food ham­pers at South Park mall two weeks ago to the ris­ing num­ber of peo­ple beg­ging on the streets every day, the in­crease in pover­ty is glar­ing and has been com­pound­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

When COVID-19 hit, thou­sands of peo­ple lost their jobs.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Jai Lelad­hars­ingh said that based on a sur­vey done by that group, 5,000 busi­ness­es closed with­in the last 12 months, re­sult­ing in 13,000 jobs be­ing lost. Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc­Clashie said in June that al­though he did not have up­dat­ed un­em­ploy­ment sta­tis­tics for the en­tire coun­try, be­tween Jan­u­ary to April of this year 235 peo­ple had filed with the min­istry as be­ing un­em­ployed.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment two weeks ago, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said as of June 2020, 113,000 peo­ple lost their jobs since 2015.

Those who be­came un­em­ployed in re­cent years al­so tell a tale of the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. Hun­dreds left job­less have had to dig deep to find cre­ative ways to sur­vive by tap­ping in­to crafts and trade that they learnt. But with the on­slaught of the pan­dem­ic, that too fell apart for many.

Some peo­ple have re­sort­ed to plant­i­ng crops at home to help feed them­selves and sup­ple­ment their small in­come. Oth­ers have re­port­ed cut­ting back on the num­ber of meals and the quan­ti­ty of food they eat so they could live to see an­oth­er day.

One man was re­port­ed­ly sell­ing gal­vanise sheets off his roof to buy food re­cent­ly. Chil­dren have dropped out of school as par­ents are un­able to pro­vide reg­u­lar meals or pay elec­tric­i­ty and in­ter­net bills to en­sure they ac­cess on­line school­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, more than $341 mil­lion was spent on COVID-19 re­lief pro­grammes in 2020 alone as they sought to help out cit­i­zens fac­ing hard­ships.

Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions have been in­un­dat­ed with re­quests for help from those who are en­coun­ter­ing prob­lems pro­vid­ing ba­sic ameni­ties for their fam­i­lies. Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty had said the de­mand for help from their or­gan­i­sa­tion in­creased by 50 per cent.

Di­rec­tor, Kind­ness Makes a Dif­fer­ence Foun­da­tion Kavi­ta Rag­bir said that peo­ple are much more im­pov­er­ished as the pan­dem­ic has wreaked hav­oc on the coun­try's so­cial fab­ric. Peo­ple have lost their jobs and are des­per­ate, peo­ple are evict­ed from their homes and their men­tal health are be­ing af­fect­ed, chair­per­son, Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice, Leela Ramdeen shared.

Economist Dr Vaalmikki Arjoon

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

More in­equal­i­ty

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) fi­nan­cial econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon told the Sun­day Guardian by email that he es­ti­mates a fam­i­ly of four in 2021 in T&T needs at least $3,500 to $4,000 a month to sur­vive, and that is ex­clu­sive of rental and med­ical costs.

The grow­ing pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic have giv­en low­er-in­come peo­ple an even small­er chance of sur­vival.

He point­ed to the World In­equal­i­ty Data­base which shows that the top one per cent or the rich­est in­come earn­ers in T&T re­ceived 20.2 per cent of the to­tal na­tion­al pre-tax in­come in 2019. In 2010 and 2005, they earned 20.7 per cent and 21.4 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

Even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, these sta­tis­tics show that in­equal­i­ty in T&T was se­vere. The pan­dem­ic has made a bad sit­u­a­tion even worse, he said.

He point­ed to an In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) sur­vey done in Au­gust 2020 which found that 67 per cent of low-in­come house­holds were af­fect­ed by job loss­es.

"This stag­ger­ing gap be­tween the in­come earn­ings among the high and low-in­come earn­ers wors­ened due to the COVID fall­out and will like­ly per­sist for the next few years, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the clo­sure of many SMEs and the re­sul­tant ham­mer­ing to em­ploy­ment lev­els. Con­sumers are spend­ing less due to height­ened un­cer­tain­ty about the fu­ture of the econ­o­my. With frag­ile sales rev­enues and cash-flow prob­lems, many SMEs have shut their doors, while the large com­pa­nies are in a bet­ter po­si­tion fi­nan­cial­ly to sur­vive the pan­dem­ic."

He paint­ed a pic­ture of the chal­lenges the new poor face which in­cludes un­em­ploy­ment, grow­ing hunger, and even dis­eases.

"The ex­ac­er­bat­ed pover­ty lev­els could al­so ac­count for some of the high in­fec­tion lev­els as per­sons be­come un­em­ployed and ex­haust their sav­ings, many would not be able to af­ford rent and have no choice but to share ac­com­mo­da­tion with oth­er per­sons in small and con­fined rooms or apart­ments, some of which may be un­hy­gien­ic, which in turn, in­creased the spread of the virus.

"Many oth­ers felt forced to break reg­u­la­tions and take up oth­er jobs, such as work­ing for mi­cro-busi­ness­es in the un­der­ground econ­o­my, which may not be ad­her­ing to prop­er health stan­dards in the work­place."

Ar­joon pre­dict­ed that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion will on­ly make it worse for the poor.

"This will damp­en the wage lev­els of low-skilled work­ers across the board, caus­ing fur­ther in­equal­i­ty and pover­ty. Sev­er­al who can­not get jobs will look for work in the in­for­mal sec­tor, such as un­reg­is­tered busi­ness­es that are still op­er­at­ing. In these sec­tors, many are at risk of ex­treme in­come in­se­cu­ri­ty as they may be paid low­er than min­i­mum wage and re­ceive no ac­cess to safe­ty nets such as sev­er­ance, pen­sion schemes, union rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

He added that the food prices could al­so go up which will af­fect low­er-in­come peo­ple even more.

"The UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) da­ta shows that the glob­al food price in­dex in­creased by 30.8 per cent be­tween April 2020 and 2021, with price in­creas­es in dairy by 24 per cent, meat by five per cent, sug­ar by 60 per cent and ce­re­al by 26 per cent to name a few.

"Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prices have al­so gone up. Ship­ping and con­tain­er costs have al­so in­creased for im­porters. Nat­u­ral­ly, all these high­er prices and added costs will be passed on to con­sumers lo­cal­ly, in an en­vi­ron­ment where many house­holds and SMEs are al­ready fi­nan­cial­ly strained.

"Re­moval of these sub­si­dies, es­pe­cial­ly if it hap­pens too ear­ly, will fur­ther in­flate the costs of busi­ness op­er­a­tions in an ex­ist­ing frag­ile en­vi­ron­ment, and is the type of pol­i­cy that will cause many to be re­trenched and pover­ty ex­ac­er­bat­ed."

Peo­ple earn­ing min­i­mum wage who can some­how hold on to their jobs will not be able to sus­tain their house­holds with the con­comi­tant in­crease in the cost of liv­ing, Ar­joon added.

A homeless man begs for money from passersby at the corner of Queen Janelle Commissiong and St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, in November last year.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Pover­ty lev­els

Ac­cord­ing to a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment-ini­ti­at­ed pover­ty study in 2014, 24.5 per cent of T&T cit­i­zens were liv­ing in pover­ty. The an­nu­alised pover­ty line for Trinidad was $11,479, which sug­gest­ed that a poor Trinida­di­an lived on $956 per month at that time. The an­nu­alised pover­ty line for To­ba­go was $12,177 an­nu­al­ly, which sug­gest­ed that a poor To­bag­on­ian lived on $1,015 per month at that time.

The study iden­ti­fied ar­eas with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of poor peo­ple–Rio Claro/Ma­yaro (48.7 per cent), Point Fortin (35.6 per cent), Diego Mar­tin (33.5 per cent), and Siparia (31.7 per cent).

From an eth­nic point of view, the ma­jor­i­ty of vul­ner­a­ble, poor, and in­di­gent peo­ple were Africans, In­di­ans, and peo­ple of mixed race.

The Bor­gen Project–a US-based NGO–in a re­port pub­lished on its web­site in 2017, stat­ed that pover­ty lev­els in T&T re­mained high. The re­port re­ferred to a 2015 re­view con­duct­ed by the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion, a non­par­ti­san think tank fo­cused on pub­lic pol­i­cy, which stat­ed that over 20 per cent of T&T’s cit­i­zens were liv­ing be­low the pover­ty line. The re­port al­so stat­ed that 11 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was un­der­nour­ished.

These un­ex­pect­ed­ly high rates of pover­ty and mal­nu­tri­tion may be part­ly due to the con­sid­er­able gen­der-wage gap present in T&T, they found. The Bor­gen re­port blamed a lack of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of T&T’s en­er­gy-dom­i­nat­ed econ­o­my and an in­ef­fi­cient busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that does not en­cour­age for­eign in­vest­ment.

UWI lec­tur­er in the So­ci­ol­o­gy Unit, Dr She­lene Gomes in an email re­sponse to the Sun­day Guardian re­ferred to the T&T House­hold Bud­getary Sur­vey (2008-2009), which showed that 21.8 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was liv­ing be­low the pover­ty line (Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, 2011).

She said ac­cord­ing to the UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) or the "Glob­al Goals" there are mul­ti­ple de­f­i­n­i­tions of pover­ty.

She did not give spe­cif­ic wage lev­els which de­ter­mine "pover­ty" as she said pover­ty was de­fined by more than just wage lev­els.

Pover­ty is cat­e­gorised as ab­solute or rel­a­tive, she said. Ab­solute pover­ty ex­am­ines whether ba­sic hu­man needs are met in­clud­ing food, safe drink­ing wa­ter, san­i­ta­tion fa­cil­i­ties, health, shel­ter, ed­u­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion. It de­pends not on­ly on in­come but al­so on ac­cess to so­cial ser­vices. Rel­a­tive pover­ty, mean­while, is de­fined in re­la­tion to the eco­nom­ic sta­tus of oth­er mem­bers of the so­ci­ety: peo­ple are poor if they fall be­low pre­vail­ing stan­dards of liv­ing in a giv­en so­ci­etal con­text.

The Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) Pover­ty re­port pre­pared by the Cen­tre for Health Eco­nom­ics, UWI in 2018 stat­ed that "pover­ty, in the gen­er­al sense, was held to be a lack of ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties es­sen­tial for a liv­ing—food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, ba­sic ameni­ties such as elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter and mon­ey."

Away from de­f­i­n­i­tions, Gomes said al­though tem­po­rary COVID-19 grants giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment are nec­es­sary and use­ful, there are deep­er struc­tur­al is­sues to pover­ty to meet ba­sic needs and to live with dig­ni­ty "which go be­yond each elec­tion cy­cle."

Gomes spoke about some of the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments even be­fore the pan­dem­ic that led to job loss­es in T&T and which im­pact­ed pover­ty lev­els.

She said be­fore the pan­dem­ic and the most re­cent job loss­es for in­stance at Caribbean Air­lines, there were eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments that ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the pop­u­la­tion such as the clo­sure of Petrotrin. One of the is­sues is the State and em­ploy­ers aban­don­ing work­ers to take care of them­selves with­out so­cial sup­port.

"While per­sons may have been re-hired, it was in some cas­es on con­tracts de­void of ben­e­fits that would al­low a sim­i­lar stan­dard of liv­ing, erod­ed fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty and in ef­fect made work­ers more vul­ner­a­ble to risk–hence the im­por­tance of the point about rel­a­tive pover­ty."

She said it was ob­vi­ous that Petrotrin work­ers are not the "poor­est of the poor" in T&T, but this ex­am­ple points to a glob­al trend that is be­ing repli­cat­ed in T&T to­ward gig work where­by the State and com­pa­nies di­vest re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ers–broad­er ex­am­ples in­clude that of Uber and Airbnb–where com­pa­nies reap the prof­its and "self-em­ployed" work­ers car­ry the risks and the costs.

Minister of Social Development and Family Services Donna Cox.

Cox: Govt spent $341 M

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Don­na Cox who has come un­der fire for her com­ment that some peo­ple are "greedy and not needy" as they joined long lines for food ham­pers while not ad­her­ing to COVID-19 safe­ty pro­to­cols, de­fend­ed the work that her min­istry has done to as­sist the need­i­est since the pan­dem­ic hit in 2020.

Cox said while the min­istry does not have the most re­cent sta­tis­tics on pover­ty, she ad­mit­ted that with the lock­down and clo­sure of busi­ness­es it is ex­pect­ed that the most vul­ner­a­ble in T&T would have been hit hard by the eco­nom­ic prob­lems.

She said the mon­ey that the Gov­ern­ment has spent specif­i­cal­ly on pan­dem­ic re­lief is an ac­knowl­edge­ment of how “tough” the sit­u­a­tion is in the coun­try.

For 2020 alone they as­sist­ed over 176, 800 peo­ple, and that cost rough­ly $341 mil­lion.

She said she re­mains "op­ti­mistic" that as more peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed and the coun­try re­opens the so­cial sit­u­a­tion would in­crease.

"What we try to do is to help as many per­sons are we can who are af­fect­ed at this time. The role of the Gov­ern­ment is to help those who need it the most."

In ad­di­tion to re­lief grants, she said, as part of the Gov­ern­ment's so­cial pro­gramme, food bas­kets are be­ing dis­trib­uted to low­er-in­come fam­i­lies. The dis­tri­b­u­tion was an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter on May 7 to as­sist vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies strug­gling to feed them­selves.

Ac­cord­ing to Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat so far 72,000 of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO) mar­ket box­es have been dis­trib­uted through­out the coun­try. The pro­gramme start­ed in May and ends at the end of Sep­tem­ber.

COVID-19 SO­CIAL SUP­PORT 2020

*Ad­di­tion­al help to ex­ist­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries of food sup­port has been giv­en to 25,101 peo­ple to date.

*Food and In­come/Food Sup­port-Re­trenched/ter­mi­nat­ed/in­come re­duced have been paid to 54, 724 peo­ple.

*The pro­vi­sion of Food Sup­port to house­holds that re­ceive meals from the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme but who are not cur­rent ben­e­fi­cia­ries of food sup­port were paid to 20,497 peo­ple.

*Sup­port to cur­rent ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Pub­lic As­sis­tance and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant have been giv­en to 42,451.

*Food sup­port to peo­ple who ap­plied for Se­nior Cit­i­zens Pen­sion but their mat­ters were not de­ter­mined has been giv­en to 2,818 ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

*Food Sup­port to peo­ple who ap­plied for Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant but their mat­ters were not de­ter­mined has been giv­en to 488 ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

*Emer­gency ham­pers were pro­vid­ed to fam­i­lies in ur­gent need dur­ing the stay-at-home pe­ri­od. This project was ex­e­cut­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the 14 Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions and was dis­trib­uted to 1,400 ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

*Food Vouch­ers/Mar­ket Box­es pro­vid­ed to fam­i­lies, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture dur­ing the stay-at-home pe­ri­od have been gone to 24,999 ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

*Rental As­sis­tance to a fam­i­ly where a mem­ber was re­trenched/ter­mi­nat­ed/re­duced has been giv­en to 4,322 ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

The to­tal for all of these is $341, 125, 345.

CORE GOV­ERN­MENT GRANTS

Num­ber of Peo­ple on Grants June 2021 New Peo­ple in Fis­cal 2021

Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant (Chil­dren) 2558 561

Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant (Adults) 22,936 1,497

Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion 108,191 8,703

Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant 18,021 2,146

Food Sup­port 30,939 4,897

To­tal 180,087 17,804