Sascha Wil­son

New­ly-ap­point­ed Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has sought to de­fend his Face­book post that ig­nit­ed fiery crit­i­cism over so­cial me­dia.

Hinds made the post fol­low­ing an en­counter with an ap­par­ent­ly so­cial­ly-dis­placed man out­side a su­per­mar­ket on Wednes­day, where the min­is­ter turned down a re­quest from the man for mon­ey. Speak­ing on the 102.1 FM Pow­er Break­fast Show yes­ter­day, Hinds said he made the post on Wednes­day be­cause as he drove off fol­low­ing his in­ter­ac­tion with a man, he was think­ing about his com­mit­ment to the coun­try and his new port­fo­lio.

“The rea­son that I post­ed that is be­cause, op­er­at­ing in my mind as I drove off be­cause of my com­mit­ment to this coun­try, be­cause of my com­mit­ment to young peo­ple, I saw that as telling me that here we have some young peo­ple in this coun­try who needs to be coun­selled and to be guid­ed and to be pre­pared for more pro­duc­tive lives and don’t have to undig­ni­fy them­selves in mak­ing re­quest of oth­er peo­ple when they can do it them­selves.

“All of this is what was op­er­at­ing in my mind, my love, my com­pas­sion, and most of all, my com­mit­ment giv­en my re­cent ap­point­ment in do­ing some­thing about these kinds of is­sues in so­ci­ety.”

Hinds’ post stat­ed, “Not even aware that I was in his fo­cus, on ex­it­ing the Massy Food­store, I en­tered my ve­hi­cle. I set­tled in and ob­served a body up to my win­dow. Clos­er ob­ser­va­tion re­vealed a per­haps 30-year old, healthy-look­ing, mus­cu­lar man. I looked for the piper in him and could not find it. He beck­oned me to talk to him. I rolled down my glass win­dow and he de­liv­ered! “Ah just ask­ing for a lil $20 to buy some­thing to eat!” I im­me­di­ate­ly re­flect­ed on a pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion when an­oth­er young man asked me for “ah lil $100”. I have giv­en fi­nan­cial and oth­er as­sis­tance many times in greater quan­ti­ty, but I re­fused them both! Ah doh like the idea of young, ap­par­ent­ly fit men beg­ging! And ah doh like it more, when they tell me hum­much dey want! I re­flect­ed deeply on my new port­fo­lio, took a deep breath; and drove away high­ly en­er­gized to do this crit­i­cal work.”

Hinds has since delet­ed the post.

But re­call­ing the in­ci­dent in the in­ter­view, Hinds said he al­so had COVID-19 on his mind when the man ap­proached him as he sat in his car. He said the is­sue was not so much that he had asked for mon­ey but he spec­i­fied how much he want­ed.

De­scrib­ing him­self as one of the most gen­er­ous peo­ple in the world, Hinds said, “So that is just re­al­ly what was op­er­at­ing in my mind but the con­text of this was I had just come out of the su­per­mar­ket and in­ter­est­ing­ly enough I had gone in there to buy food and God is my wit­ness, for some­one who need­ed it.”

Hinds said he on­ly had time to do a quick as­sess­ment be­cause he was in full flight since the place he was head­ing to was clos­ing in half an hour and he al­so had to drop off the food.

“Some peo­ple are of the view I should have stopped and tak­en him to my of­fice and found out what was his con­di­tion. I just ex­plained to you truth­ful­ly what the con­text was and the time frame and the as­sess­ment that I made. It was not about judg­ing the man. I don’t know the man. It was just a quick usu­al or­di­nary as­sess­ment that every sim­ple hu­man be­ing con­ducts when an­oth­er hu­man is stand­ing in front of them.”

Hinds said he felt it was im­por­tant to make the post be­cause he viewed such ex­pe­ri­ences as learn­ing and teach­ing mo­ments. He, how­ev­er, be­lieves the pop­u­la­tion wast­ed too much time on the is­sue.

“When I now look back with hind­sight at the way that mat­ter ex­er­cised the whole coun­try al­most for that whole day yes­ter­day, I re­al­ly do think it is a waste of all of our time in terms of ex­er­cis­ing our­selves on this mat­ter when there are so many oth­er im­por­tant things to ad­dress.”