Labelling poor children as lesser beings
ACHILD is 12 years old and attending high school. She is on the PATH programme (Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education) designed to help the poorest children and their parents navigate the basic needs in educating the child.
At lunchtime the child is given a ticket coloured different to those given to the non-PATH children and told to stand in a different line. In some instances, the child is asked to pay anywhere between $40 and $120 for a lunch that has already been paid for through PATH.
Is it just plain corruption or are some of the schools forced to juggle through a forest of financial difficulties that many on the outside find difficult to comprehend?
Recently, Nationwide News Network unleashed a crack investigative unit into how
PATH was being bastardised and children marginalised by showing how they were belittled in the lunch-feeding part of the programme.
A total of 10 schools comprised the sample, but what the Nationwide team uncovered indicated widespread abuse of the programme. The Programme of Advancement
Through Health and Education is a conditional cash transfer programme that is funded by the Government of Jamaica and the World Bank. It came about in 2002.
The overall findings of the investigative unit indicated poor nutrition, segregation and abuse of some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable children. At lunchtime, in some instances, the PATH children were given less wholesome meals, lesser portions, placed in different lines, and some had to wait until non-PATH children were given first serving in the line.
No rational adult wants to be poor or to wear his state of penury as a badge of honour. Children have little choice in the matter and, in a perfect world the State would want to ensure that governmental power is never brought to bear on introducing poor children to seeing themselves as second-class citizens.
It is my understanding, according to one source, that Minister Ruel Reid has been plainly embarrassed by the exposé. Another source who was connected to the Ministry of Education under a People’s National Party administration said, “Sometimes the most meaningful of policies is manipulated by those who have been in the system for many years, and those people include school boards, principals and teachers. Some teachers are in it for the business opportunities they can personally make out of the system and some are quite barefaced, not even pretending that teaching children is their main objective.”
One school principal had a varied take on the investigation. She wanted her name kept out of the newspaper. “At a certain stage I see nothing wrong with making a child know that his parent is poor and that it is others helping to feed him at lunchtime. I don’t agree with the direct labelling by putting them in different lines and serving them callaloo rice while others are getting chicken and gravy.
“What I can tell you, though, is that the funds we receive from the ministry for various matters, including the PATH part, has never been enough and we have to be very inventive if we want to keep the school open and barely viable.”
I cannot accept that even one school can be receiving PATH funds set aside for 246,000 of the poorest children among us and some are not just being asked to pay but they are placed aside in a ‘leper’ line and being directly signalled that he or she is worth less than others.
If there is one great positive, it is that all schools are now on tenterhooks and deathly afraid of the incursion of another investigative team of intrepid reporters.