Norris R. McDonald | Structural violence, inequality and the bleeding of Jamaica

Teachers flee, nurses too, fed up

Civil servants tiad, waan give up

Di system wring dem dry, no lie – Not even wata leff inna dem yeye!

JAMAICA IS facing a quiet emergency. A humanitarian crisis wrapped up in glowing IMF reports and “macro-stability” buzzwords. But if you listen close past the headlines, past the graphs, what you’ll hear is the groaning of a people being crushed beneath the weight of inequality.

A greedy political ruling class, tainted by accusations of all sorts of malfeasance and the economic elites are thriving while the middle class and poor people at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are being ‘downpressed’.

This isn’t just a wealth gap, it’s a life-and-International Monetary Fund debt-death trap. This is a widening economic chasm where life expectancy is not even guaranteed for babies of the poor.

BABIES ARE DYING — AND NO ONE’S ACCOUNTABLE

In 2022, Jamaica’s infant mortality rate stood at 16.08 deaths per 1,000 live births. Neonatal deaths within the first 28 days were even higher, at 17.9. Prematurity and birth asphyxia are the biggest killers.

How’s that!?

Isn’t that a downright shame that our babies are dying because the system can’t even deliver the basics.

This is truly heartbreaking!

This is racially and class-biased structural economic violence that is disguised as underfunding and “tough IMF budget decisions”.

Another thing of great concern is the rapid migration of skills. Since this government took office, this brain drain has gone from a slow drip to a full-blown haemorrhage.

Over 4,000 nurses gone since 2019. More than 1,600 teachers resigned or migrated in 2023 alone. And tech talent? Being harvested like ripe fruit by Canada, the UK, and the US – often before graduation gowns even hit the ground.

Jamaica is now a training camp for foreign economies. We pay to educate them. They pay to extract them. And the government and money traders perhaps smile because there may be the expectation that remittances will go up, if and when these people send money back home to take care of families.

What a life! What a way to build an economy and society!

‘CAPITALISM GONE MAD’ – THEN AND NOW

And yet the government and its supporters boast about an economic growth that is leaving more than half the population behind.

‘Yeh man!’

But who is this economy really serving? Who’s eating? Who’s healing?

It certainly is not the people waiting 12 hours in the emergency room, or a middle-class female teacher trying to stretch $10,000 a week across rent, utilities, and three mouths to feed.

Workers on fixed income such as minimum wages are facing a daily crisis of living and survival.

But the basic reality is that minimum wage earners spend over 70 per cent of their income just on food and transportation. What’s left? Nothing. Not for rent. Not for savings. Not for schoolbooks. Not for dreams.

And as the Mighty Sparrow sang about Trinidad, but it might as well be Jamaica today:

“You got to be a millionaire

Or some kind of petit bourgeoisie

Any time you are living here

In this country.”

– Mighty Sparrow, Capitalism Gone Mad!

That calypso truth hit different because it’s still real. If you’re poor, survival is your full-time job. If you’re middle class, you’re one hospital bill away from poverty. And if you want peace of mind? You probably had to migrate to get it.

Meanwhile, luxury hotels rise like cathedrals in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios. Gated communities expand. Security guards – hired from the same communities left behind – stand watch so the rich can sleep peacefully, undisturbed by the reality outside their fences. This isn’t development. This is a digital plantation economy where the poor serve the rich under the glossy illusion of national progress.

My friends, this sad narrative persists: Jamaica is doing well. The economy is stable. Investors are happy. High rise apartment builds and hotels and segregated beaches are going up.

But what about the single mother in Portmore? The diabetic pensioner in Clarendon? The high school graduate in Hanover who scored seven CSEC subjects but can’t find a job, or afford UWI?

A NATION STARVING IN SILENCE

Protein-energy malnutrition, once a relic of post-colonial rural life, is now waving a red flag across the island. Children in urban areas – yes, Kingston too – are going to bed hungry. Some are stunted. Some are wasting away. Some are dying before their fifth birthday.

As I wrote on April 2: “Jamaican children are either malnourished, stunted, wasting away, or dead before their fifth birthday.” It bears repeating, because it’s a scandal that should shame us into action.

Migration, at this point, has become our social safety valve. The remittance pipeline pumps in over US$3.6 billion each year, keeping households afloat. But make no mistake: this is triage, not treatment. Remittances patch the wounds, but they don’t heal the body. The more we export our best people, the more hollow this country becomes. Empty clinics. Leaderless classrooms. Neighbourhoods built on nostalgia and barrels from abroad.

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

Feed the nation. Start with universal school meal programmes. Make food security real for rural households. Cut down ultra-processed junk imports.

Rebuild the health system. Fund cancer prevention. Fund kidney care. Fund mental health. Pay nurses and doctors what they deserve.

Close the income gap. Raise the minimum wage beyond survival levels. Tax real estate hoarding. Build safety nets around the informal economy, because that’s where half the country hustles just to breathe.

Finally, invest in people. Universal childcare. Free tertiary education in health, teaching, engineering. Create returnee programmes, diaspora fellowships, and innovation hubs. Give our people a reason to stay, or a reason to come back.

Because the truth is this: the economy might grow on paper, but if children are starving, hospitals are falling apart, and every graduation season feels like a farewell ceremony, then we are not developing, we are bleeding. And the wound is deep.

That is the ‘bitta’ truth.

Norris McDonald is an economic journalist, political analyst, and respiratory therapist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and miaminorris@yahoo.com.