Putting the cart before the horse in talking recovery
FINANCE MINISTER Dr Nigel Clarke has announced his intention to have a plan dealing with the ordered resuscitation of the Jamaican economy after COVID-19. To this end, he has assembled a COVID-19 economic recovery task force whose mandate, according to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, is not to be a talk shop.
Well, that’s all it can be as we are in the middle of a crisis. The nation hasn’t even come to terms with the reality of what it faces currently, based on the continued increase numbers of COVID-19 cases each day, and the lag effect of the multiplier relating to confirmed cases.
Unless we focus on that, and it is effectively addressed, we are putting the horse before the cart. We are going to get a lot of dejected, traumatised, jobless citizens with pent-up rage that will create havoc and mayhem in a society with a proclivity for lawlessness and crime and violence.
From the outset, Minister Clarke, understandably, badly underestimated the cost and consequences of this pandemic. Nothing wrong with that. This pandemic is new to everybody, so we have to learn as we go along. The minister’s immediate focus has to be a better and far more coronavirus-responsive budget to deal with what we are currently faced with.
At the same time, the Bank of Jamaica has to use many more of its policy tools to drive a more expansive monetary policy so that it can fill in the blanks when such a major sector as tourism is closed.
It is pointless trying to fit a round peg in a square hole by the Ministry of Finance being miserly, which is different from being prudent, when the pandemic, which is a silent war with vulgar and deadly outcomes, rages, and people are frightened, caged, and, many times, are unwittingly, and unknowingly, exposed.
The coronavirus is not like mumps or chickenpox, where you can see it. It stalks the land unseen, yet we must believe that it can strike with a deadly force or leave us bedridden and in pain. That is what it does, and a pandemic is extremely costly to cope with.
INADEQUATE
Let us give an example. The Ministry of Health was given $2.8 billion to tackle the pandemic during the Budget in early March. The ministry has $300,000 left and needs a lot more equipment and many more workers to do contact tracing. So the original budget is totally inadequate.
With COVID-19 now accelerating at a quickened pace, it would be unfortunate if the health minister has to now go cap in hand to the finance minister, who is penny-pinching, conscious of the fact that government revenues are declining rapidly while expenditures are escalating.
But this is the here and now, which requires large financial commitments long before we begin genuflecting over an ordered resuscitation of the economy.
Health considerations, attention to details, such as closely monitoring adherence to guidelines, and outlays in a pandemic can only be compressed at our peril, and one BPO confirms this.
Another suggestion. There should be an immediate get-together, in a war-room setting, of leading members of the JLP administration, including councillors and mayors in areas most affected, along with their opposition PNP counterparts, to thrash out a decisive plan of action.
This is imperative because the politicians and their henchmen, representing both parties, have their ears to the ground, knowing when curfews should be implemented, the level of preparation, and how it must be choreographed in different areas and communities. In this way, we won’t negate the effectiveness of a curfew because pharmacies and supermarkets are under-supplied and patrons ‘bungle up’ in desperation to avoid being deprived of necessities. When this joint communication is made in this land of tribalism and garrison, it will be a battle cry with tremendous effectiveness as Anju stands beside Peter, and Nigel beside Mark, and Fitz Jackson beside Dr Horace Chang, and Mayor Delroy Williams beside Mayor Norman Scott, and councillors are paired together.
Party supporters seeing stalwarts working together for the nation while sharing information with the public will get a better sense of the gravity of the coronavirus.
There are other advantages. The country has made great strides in terms of macroeconomic stability, and it is painful to see the reversal as the economy contracts.
LOT TO BE DESIRED
While the country has done well in financial terms, the real estate sector has suffered from massive infrastructural deficits. Our rural roads and bridges leave a lot to be desired; our gullies and drainage systems are unsightly and are disgusting displays of neglect; our absent sidewalks, especially in small towns, are statements of invitations for road accidents; and our housing stock and commercial buildings in the inner city are a wasteland of despair.
Prime Minister Holness is gradually opening the construction sector with some major projects, but we should undertake other work projects to drive employment under the supervision of the National Works Agencies (NWA). Input of specific projects and their priorities should be submitted by the local council l or sand MPs. This will drive much needed employment, providing the jobless with income and a reduction of despair.
I have faith in out MPs, mayors, and councillors, in both parties, who are well aware of what the Government is up against with the arrival of this pandemic; what the citizens are confronted with in just trying to cope; and what the demand will be on the Budget and, on an already suffocating national debt. I think our politicians will apply due diligence and will be restrained in making extravagant requests.
I believe that here is another plan the Government should institute, and that is to allow MPs, working along with councillors, to submit special funding requests, independent of the Works project, for individuals in their various constituencies who have fallen through the cracks in that they do not qualify for the Government’s laudatory initiative, the $10 billion COVID19 Allocation of Resource for Employees (CARE) programme.
This might push the constituency allocation above its present limit, but as Minister Clarke acknowledges, so many residents, have no national ID, no bank account, and 80per cent of them have a preference for in-person attendance at government tax offices instead of using the Internet. Their financial plight is a lonely one without Government’s awareness to ensure assistance.
If both JLP and PNP work together to undertake this massive allocation and distribution of resources, the JLP administration could use this opportunity to instil some behavioural changes, which it could jump-start by hiring lots of psychiatrists, educators, and social workers. Hopefully, with such massive investments the returns will be a more civil, formal, highly productive, and ordered society, which the Government can eventually build on with its COVID-19 recovery task force.