Just today in what is being recorded as a landmark speech, even as the UN holds its members meeting in the United States of America, the Hon Sen. Bernie Saunders made a painstaking but brutally honest speech, which we are sure is hard for many to swallow.
“At a time of exploding technology and wealth, how do we move away from a world of war, terrorism and massive levels of poverty into a world of peace and economic security for all? How do we move toward a global community in which people have the decent jobs, food, clean water, education, healthcare, and housing they need? The divide between domestic and foreign policy is not only artificial but also counterproductive.” Sen Bernie SaundersWe knew someone else would say it, Jesus said how can you say you love me and don’t love the brother you can’t see… ( 1 John 4:20)
Get me clear here, we did the right thing, HELP OUR NEIGHBOURS, however I am ‘equally” very concerned that we have an island St. Vincent & the Grenadines where many ‘entrepreneurial citizens in the MSME sector are bawling for help, (21.5%) 14’000 plus out of 109’00O unemployment for people between the ages of 18-55…
So many tangible resources are needed to help people start up businesses and grow their businesses, expand to global market spaces to gain a sustainable livelihood.
What we have found locally between 2012 and 2017 the majority of times you attempt to “partner” and do a project to help the disadvantage you are told “OH WE DONT HAVE ANY MONEY, THE BUDGET”; but all of a sudden you find thousands of US dollars to help your brothers overseas…
While we applaud your efforts and rightfully so, to help islands in times of disaster; I’m the least impressed with the artificial foreign policy acts, while leaving your domestic policy implementation to suffer drastically… I am challenging you now to return HOME and help those persons in SVG who are more than willing to help themselves to help others, it took no time to pull all these resources together yet for all these years your local Economic GROWTH has been stagnant and there is a blunt refusal to help local entrepreneurs unless it’s to your ‘people\representatives” benefit…
Professionally we have faced this wrath and now we have to speak out, we do know this will ruffle many feathers but the TRUTH has to be spoken. Our domestic policy needs to change and cease the superficiality.
In 2014 we applied for a concession as set forth by the constitution for legally registered Non-Profit Companies on equipment being imported to train (14) young people under a GEF-SGP\UNDP funded -Electronic Waste Management Project and we were told bluntly by an officer in the MInistry of FINANCE “we DON’T know you, if you want it go to the PRIME MINISTER”, to our disbelief we did just that and the Hon. Dr. Ralph Gonsalves apologized to us and did all he could to accommodate our request; nevertheless, it was too late. We wrote to the Ministry of the Environment and sought to get a “minimal” stipend $2000 XCD granted (cover transportation and refreshments) for the 14 young people who are approved trainer of trainers in E-Waste Management; a first for St. Vincent and the Grenadines in January 2016, and to date we have not had a single response from this ministry, regardless how many times we attempted to follow up, we tried several other departments and stakeholders and were denied or ignored.
Additionally, we have had agreements in place to utilize a Government Community Center and we have been refused access to this day from an officer though this was signed off and agreed to by a Permanent Secretary.These domestic policies always trouble me vs how we deal with Foreign Policy and we cannot continue to ignore them and sweep them under the carpet, again I do commend your efforts to help our fallen brothers but what we need to also recognize and give urgent attention to is that we have an ongoing crisis with crimes and violence in our land, especially violence against women, domestic abuse, sexual abuse against minors and we are not seeing the urgency given to it.
If one truly let go of the emotions and face the reality that an increase of crime and violence is linked directly to unemployment and other socio-economic challenges faced by citizens, one would see why at this time we once again have to raise the alarm and encourage local government (Parliament) which is made up of Ruling Government and Opposition MP’s to stop the artificial games, real people lives are at at stake here and we need to stop this after the disaster approach to get assertive but do all we can to practically implement more mitigation efforts.
We cannot live on paved roads and buildings alone; we cannot live on handouts of can foods, galvanize, tarpaulins, wood or cement. We should all be helping our people to become resilient citizens and doing all possible to help them earn economic freedom so that when these disasters do occur, they will be in a much better position to help themselves, and others.
There is no loss to the local economies when we boost job, income earning initiatives, actually our GDP grows by much, as is proven that the “MSME” Micro Small and Medium Enterprises contribute more than 70% of revenue to the regional economies, surpassing that of even corporate investment as indicated by the Caribbean Development Bank Report.The time is now to balance the scale, we do hope as we reflect on this 2017 Hurricane Season it helps us to revisit our domestic and foreign policy strategies and place more emphasis on building much stronger local economies and by extension sustainable livelihoods for our citizens. Let us go forward and build that world now.
Dr. Ashley C. John Amb.
CCWG Focal Point for Civil Society Organisations
St. Vincent & the Grenadines
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This blog is published by Sustainable People & Communities Inc.(SPCI) through the Grow Healthy initiative.