Ronald Thwaites | Moral authority

What moral authority does any elected politician in Jamaica have to tell a public servant about wage restraint or productivity? They have tilted the very game they are asking the rest of us to play.

When serving as a member of parliament (MP), I argued for an increase in pay for parliamentarians based on the all-consuming responsibilities of effective representation and ministerial duties, which prevented other income-earning. That legitimate request was denied.

Since then, MPs and ministers have tripled their pay, shown no improved productivity, but now have the gall to want to mandate that everyone but themselves should accept compensation lower than the anticipated rate of inflation.

A SO IT SET

Worse than these facts is the mentality that considers nothing about this inequity abnormal. Even the victims of unnecessary poverty are schooled to believe the rightness of the hymn: “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and low, and ordered their estate.”

Seriously?

Then the chorus: “All things bright and beautiful ... the good Lord made them all.”

I repudiate the theology inherent in that stanza, which is now resurgent in so-called “Christian nationalism” and anti-social pre-Vatican II Catholicism.

DISTRAUGHT

I know a middle-class family of pensioners whose fixed incomes require careful budgeting. The stable basket of food and household goods purchased fortnightly for around $35,000 two years ago cost a little more than $50,000 last week. Fuel has increased by more than 50 per cent and is still climbing.

They are quietly distraught, bitter at their helplessness while their useless MP and councillor live high off the hog.

Useless? Too harsh, you think?

No, because the road to their district still is not fixed after years of complaining; garbage collection is irregular, the water supply is inadequate, and the neighbourhood school needs an urgent makeover if good education is to be delivered. The elected officials can do little to remedy these situations so, understandably, they are seldom seen.

Those who are promoting parsimony and productivity are perceived to be plunderers of the purse. Where do morality, justice and rebuilding the national spirit fit?

OPPORTUNITY?

For the young women from the constituency I once represented who would leave high school with two or three mediocre CSEC passes, a job in a call centre was a big opportunity. Although the hours were punishing and the pay mawga, the steady work gave them a measure of independence (no one can make a ‘grand’ multiply loaves and fishes like a purposeful Jamaican woman!), an occasion to look good, a reason to postpone pregnancy, and a payslip helpful in qualifying for a visa later on.

The news last week was that thousands of those low-skilled jobs are migrating to other countries offering lower-wage arbitrage. It happened with the 807 garment industry two generations ago. It will happen again if upskilling labour does not become the foremost passion and investment of this nation.

Outsourcing jobs will continue despite the inroads of artificial intelligence. The human element cannot be technologised out of existence. At least, so we must hope. But the jobs that will remain will require much higher skill levels than my ladies brought to the call centres.

This is why continuing to rob the majority of our children of a quality education with which to meet life and the new job market is such a grievous self-inflicted wound.

How much productivity, what higher-order skills, do you expect from job seekers who are poorly socialised, semi-literate, with digital skills limited to operating TikTok?

CONFUSED

The mother, on social media, complains that she cannot get her two children registered on the PATH programme. But she goes on to tell how she had paid a woman, who has since disappeared, $47,000 to get a visa appointment for her daughter who “can run fast” and laid out another $30,000 for transportation and other expenses related to the interview which, unsurprisingly, was unsuccessful.

Discussion last week centred on the deficit of effective parenting. Many Jamaicans, like that mother, feel that, although they are clearly not wanted in the United States, getting there is their best hope for thriving. That mentality is what has to change. This country has so much to offer all our people, if only we were prepared to struggle together.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Have the teachers signed on to the wage agreement cobbled together between some trade unions and the government? And where is the serious discussion about the exodus of experienced teachers, a problem we were told was diminishing rather than escalating? How do these uncertainties affect teaching and learning?

Meanwhile, Parliament is still relaxing (with full pay); preaching about democracy while routinely cutting off the microphones of members who speak critically; wasting time and our money deriding each other; and now saying how sorry they are that hurricane recovery is grossly incomplete.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM ...

Not far from Gordon House, after eight years of infant and primary education, here are the reading scores of today’s entering Grade 7 and repeating students at one, tragically not atypical, high school.

Of 102 young people tested, ages between 12 and 14, only one is reading at Grade 7 level. Twenty are clustered between grades 3 and 6; 28 others are reading at grades 1 and 2 (appropriate for six- and seven-year-olds). The largest concentration, 37 of God’s Jamaican pickney, are reading below Grade 1 level (primer, pre-primer and below pre-primer). Another 10 are complete non-readers.

Close to half the entire Grade 7 cohort falls near or into these categories. Where is the “trend”, the “transformation”?

LETHALITY

The Empire’s chief warmonger is quoted as saying that the emphasis of the department of war is “lethality”. In reaction, we cower, kin-teet, still screechy for the visa and condone our own killing fields. That has been our recourse throughout history.

But we say we have a ministry of peace. The only way to avoid lethality and achieve peace is to correct the crisis that the above-quoted statistics truthfully reveal.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is retired principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.