Ronald Thwaites | Examining the Budget spend

We are really being taken for fools. How else do you explain a deficit of some $14 billion at the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) for this financial year alone? Something like this will recur every year. Tens of thousands of people who can’t afford food will have to contribute to pay for that waste. Watch the empty buses, few as they are, struggling on the congested roads. Rural taxpayers who benefit nothing from this operation are squeezed to pay for these losses.

That’s what’s costing us. Government policy has caused JUTC to give to taxis two thirds of its fare box and then require us to pay for the husk of a service which is not fit for purpose.

Audley, we need justice. Subsidising an efficient public transportation system is acceptable. Spiralling yearly bail-outs for an irretrievably broken company is not. Nigel, how does this one get past you?

Consider also last week’s confirmation of a price tag of over $10 billion to repair (rebuild?) the Cornwall Regional Hospital. Who is accountable for the very wrong estimates which are now doubled? And what about the over-runs on the highway projects, especially Junction and St Thomas?

Minister, justify for the bruk-pocket rate-payers the ballooning public sector wage bill extracted for the same dilatory services to which we have become resigned and for which we pay heavy fees or ‘let-offs’ anyway. And watch for the escalations by year-end.

Digest those concerns and so much more waste and misplaced priorities in the Budget now under “discussion” and match that with the stupidity of claiming that there isn’t enough money to pay for local government elections. Then add to the contempt of our reasoning ability Governor Byles’ assertion that more cash must be sanitised “to curb exuberance in the economy”, which inevitably signals that lending rates everywhere will increase, meaning higher prices for all necessities.

And still there’s more to oppress us. The boast is that recovery is so buoyant that tax in excess of all predictions is gushing in. Meaning what? More money for government to splash on subsidies like JUTC, leaving less of their own money for consumers to expend and save.

That can only be justified if you think that the State can use your money more prudentially than you can. What’s the evidence for that? They are taking us for fools.

MONEY FOR ETOC

Last week, I attended an event designed to assess the “progress” towards implementing the Patterson Report on Transforming Education. The good news is that a plan is being prepared by the esteemed Mona Institute of Business at The University of the West Indies. But, where is the money in the Budget for the execution of the recommendations, now getting stale after almost two years of waiting? Since the Estimates reflect no such provision, the cash will have to come from a re-direction of HEART/NSTA Trust funds. That should be reflected as an appropriation-in-aid. It isn’t.

The truth is the whole basis of how government spends our money, not theirs, requires reassessment and overhaul. Fifty years ago there was a voluntary citizens group called the Jamaica Tax and Ratepayers Association. In their heyday, they, along with the then vibrant National Consumers League would highlight and influence the efficient origin and destination of the tax dollar. You need such checks and balances to prevent the arrogance and autocracy of those in executive office. Who will perform that function now?

UNFAIR

There is an egregious, embedded unfairness in the amounts to be voted to subsidise tertiary education. With similar student numbers, The University of the West Indies will receive some $10 billion from this year’s budget. Contrast and explain the allotment of only $3 billion to the equally worthy The University of Technology. That amounts to colting our own game; scoring a defender’s goal, allowing tradition and history to prevail.

The public needs an extended opportunity to review how its money is being spent. The contradictions and inconsistencies raised here will not bother this administration. Obviously, after the performance regarding the local government polls in both houses of Parliament last week, they don’t care if they prove themselves ridiculous. We become the fools for allowing this behaviour to continue.

AN ETHOS OF COMMUNITY

It is becoming clearer that the political branches cannot deliver the ethos of community, the shared sense of belonging, of common purpose and zest for civic participation; those pre-political commitments (as Jimmy Carter once called them) in the absence of which the Jamaican enterprise is in jeopardy.

Was any of this discussed at the Vale Royal talks last week? The freedom and fealty to democracy which our governing party says are “in its DNA” don’t give the right to engage in some gladiator’s contest to tear each other apart or to grasp some advantage for one side over others. Instead of the ‘puss-in-the-bag’ constitutional reform being advertised nightly, how about a rock-solid commitment to equity and justice – not to the abridgement of personal freedoms. That would mean that the whole way we craft, consider and implement the national budget would have to be different. Without that, we are being taken for fools.

A POSTSCRIPT

May I thank Dr Michael Abrahams for his piece in this space last week on how girls need their fathers. The news has been full of activism about advancing the rights and freedoms of women and girls. Even Parliament is to have a Female Interests Committee. We should all take Abrahams’ reasoning to heart. Girls need a caring, principled father-figure to learn how to be women; to learn how to relate to men. The greatest obstacle to women’s achievement and fulfilment is faithless men who donate sperm, but do not linger to provide care for their spouse and love and structure for their children. To paraphrase Jimmy Carter again, broken hearts and failed families do not a strong nation make.

Rev Ronald G Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.