[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n preparation for writing this article I interviewed restaurant cashiers, street-side vendors, store attendants and a bar porter. However, it was my interview with a 24-year-old woman we’ll refer to as Julie (not her real name) that drove home to me the hell that passes for life in Saint Lucia when you’re poor with children. Julie is a graduate of George Charles Secondary School, Class of 2011. But while her school certificate marks her ready to face life’s challenges, Julie couldn’t be more ill prepared for the challenges we all must confront on a daily basis.
She has three children—ages nine, six and five respectively—by three different men. Her monthly expenses—utilities, school-related bills, rent, meals, transportation . . . —total just over $900. However, a cashier at a Chinese restaurant, Julie’s take-home pay is $550 monthly. She receives some financial assistance from the father of her five-year-old, but not nearly enough to supply the child with her most basic necessities. The other gentlemen refuse to acknowledge their given status as Julie’s “baby daddies”. While she often threatens to take them before the family court, Julie knows that would be pointless: proving they fathered two of her kids would be a mountain too high to climb. Her mother pitches in as best she can on the up-and-down wages of a market vendor. More often than she cares to recall, Julie is forced to traffic in her dignity in the name of survival. Still there are days when there is barely enough food at home, and nights when she must resort to candles because “Lucelec took the electricity” on account of non-payment of outstanding bills.
Home to Julie and her offspring is a Central Castries ghetto shack with barely enough space to accommodate one adult. She and her children share with ten other usually impatient neighbours an outdoor shower behind rusty sheets of galvanize. A five-gallon bucket in a wooden enclosure serves as the community latrine. By ordinary measure Julie’s circumstances would categorize her as a basket case, and her children officially declared “in need of proper care and attention”. But this is modern-day Saint Lucia and in the documented opinion of the powers that be, Julie is not poor. By the measure of the 2016 Poverty Assessment Report a person who earns a dollar more than $536.91 a month is to be classified above the poverty line; conceivably, that person’s living expenses account for nothing.
At the thirty-seventh meeting of the Central Development Bank’s board of governors in 2005 then prime minister Stephenson King, quoting from the year’s poverty assessment report, indicated that since 1995 the number of poor households had increased from 18.7% to 21.4 % and the number of poor people from 25.1 % to 28.8% of the population. It was also revealed that 16.2% of the nation’s people not at the time impoverished were vulnerable to shocks that could easily put them below the poverty line. Promised King: “This assessment has provided the basis for action and the Government of Saint Lucia will act decisively to stop our country from drifting further and further into the abyss of poverty. Our challenge is to accelerate and sustain growth while addressing the imperatives of unemployment, poverty and inequality of income distribution. Moreover, this needs to be done within a framework of fiscal prudence and debt sustainability.” He neglected to say how he planned to achieve the promised miracle.
Imagine my surprise then, when Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, during an appearance on DBS’s Newsmaker Live earlier this year, and with reference especially to young handicapped mothers, controversially stated the following: “ . . . not even an adult yet and that person goes out and has their first child and you help them. Then that same person goes out and has a second child. Should that person be entitled to keep that second child?”
On its face, Chastanet sounded batshit crazy. At any rate, at first. After considering the statement in the context of Julie’s situation, that of her children and so many other Saint Lucians, I concluded that the prime minister’s implied remedy wasn’t all that grotesque. A revised conclusion that will no doubt shock a particularly outspoken individual, with whom I have had many a debate on this touchy issue.
The situation is grave; far graver than the impractical figures the Poverty Assessment Report suggests. Is population control—particularly in the case of those who cannot afford to take care of their young offspring—the right approach for our country? That’s left to be determined. In all events, it can only be a small part of a larger solution. One that includes a more purposeful education system, the facilitation of an environment conducive to job creation, the easing of taxation and greater consumer protection, including broader price control. To paraphrase 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, it is vital to pursue policies that allow the population to take care of itself, instead of attempting to manage reproduction.
Prime Minister Chastanet’s statement kicked off a long overdue serious discussion. What we’ve so far heard on the topic has been naive, disingenuous and belies any suggestion of an earnest desire to bring an end to the hardships of poverty.
Too often leaders, irrespective of political hue, allow their preoccupation with the next election to obscure their view of what’s best for the next generation. Hopefully Prime Minister Chastanet’s willingness to proffer the unconventional, unexpected and unpopular marks a much needed change.
