Illusion of wealth:

There’s no doubt that the Trinidad and Tobago economy is booming.

You can’t miss the massive building structures literally popping up every few months; expensive SUVs, GMCs, BMWs and spanking new cars racing along the highways; expansions of roads with new lanes being added and the start up of work on a major overpass to ease what is now a perennial traffic nightmare on the roads.

Banks are obscenely trying to out-do each other declaring hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Billboards advertising the latest American restaurant franchises are dotting the landscape.

And more super-sized things are expected this year as the energy economy is poised to record over ten percent growth at the end of 2006, one of its highest ever.

More money will flow into the country coming from increased production in ammonia and methanol production but mainly from the  production of Atlantic LNG’s four processing trains which are very important to the United States which imports over 77 percent of its LNG from Trinidad.

Last week junior Finance Minister Conrad Enill was proudly boasting that the country was experiencing economic prosperity with unemployment rate below eight per cent and  foreign reserves were enough for seven months cover because of his government’s good fiscal management.

But with all this good news, there continues to be a significant section of the population, very disillusioned and living in stark poverty.

Winston Dookeran, the political leader of the Opposition United National Congress (UNC) and a former Central Bank governor suggested that there is an illusion of wealth in the country.

He said there were a lot of people combatting real problems of rising prices and falling real incomes, rising cost of living and lowering of standards of living, the problem of dealing with an uncertain future and a sense of fear as to when the country will reach the edge.

Social worker Clive Pantin also brought the country to a chilling reality when he said that the continued good health of the economy means nothing to the nation’s poor if the benefits from oil and gas do not trickle down reach them.

Clive should know. He beats the streets in the poor, disenfranchised communities, helping out dirt poor families with monthly grocery hampers and clothes.

I don’t know how many people are poor in the country but I see too many around me to know that the economic prosperity that the government and Central Bank is talking about is not reaching them.

There is a block, invisible or otherwise but no one is monitoring to see why there continues to grave poverty and helplessness among a section of over population.There is no policy in place for systematically breaking the cycle of poverty.

The only statistical information I could get my hands on was a 1996 report from the Ministry of Social Development which estimated that 35.9 percent of Trinidad and Tobago’s population live below the poverty line of US$1,200 dollars a year. The annual per capita income in 1996 was US$4,230 dollars.

I’m sure that the poverty figures would have been reduced since that time.

Last week, my attention was caught by the plight of two women,strangers to each other yet bound by their circumstances of poverty.

Etwarie Chanka was forced to sleep out in the open or seek shelter from kind neighbours after her ranshackled house in which she grew up fell apart.

Chanka does not work as she takes care of a physically disabled nephew on whose monthly pittance from the government, they both rely on for their survival.

With the house falling apart, Chanka’s plight was highlighted in the daily papers, resulting in scores people donating money and chipping in what ever they could to help her rebuild the house.

The second lady is 37-year old Sharon Narine, a mother of 12 children whose run down shack was destroyed when a massive tree fell on their home.

To hear Narine story is indeed piteous as she tells about the one thing she ever wanted in life, a house of her own.

She has knocked on doors of officials, reaching their offices before the crowing of the cocks, yet no one bothered to take the time to sit down with Narine to give her help and advice, even on family planning.

Although not having any formal education, Narine speaks eloquently and said although she has a one-room shack, she piles all her children together when night falls to keep them safe.

Abused at an early age, Narine also pounds into their heads, the need for a steady education to get out of their grinding poverty.

These are just two stories. There are many, many out there,not having been featured in the media and not brought to the public’s attention.

So when the authorities speak about Trinidad and Tobago moving towards to first world status in the year 2020 and the various ‘visions’ for getting us there, it rings hollow for those who don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

Maybe Trinidad and Tobago – and Guyana for that matter – could learn a thing or two from the Jamaican government which recently mandated its Human Resource Committee to reconsider the minimum standard of living below which no Jamaican should live, as a guiding barometer in the fight to eliminate poverty.

According to information from the government, some 675,600 Jamaicans were lifted out of poverty in the last 14 years, representing a reduction in poverty levels from 44.6 per cent in 1991 to 16.9 per cent last year.

The Jamaican government wins my admiration for tracking the number of poor people in the country and keeping a close scrutiny over the years on how many people were able to get out of their miserable circumstances.

According to out-going prime minister PJ Patterson, factors critical to the reduction in poverty levels include reduction in inflation, growth in real wages and reduction in relative food prices.  Growth in the informal sector and increase in remittances from friends and relatives abroad were also identified as important elements.

I spent most of last week in Jamaica and saw extreme conditions of poverty on the island. One of the areas that some of the poor people identified to me that could help them was access to education, as schooling from pre-school onwards is not free.

Unlike in Trinidad and Tobago, education is free, even up to tertiary level. And with all the money that the government is boasting about, I still continue to ask, why there are so many poor people in the country and why no one is tracking those figures.

Or is poverty an illusion as well?