…The po­lice find two tod­dlers in the street, cov­ered in fae­ces. Chil­dren live in a shed with no lights and run­ning wa­ter. The moth­er of an ail­ing son begs for help. A mom and daugh­ter die by fire in a gal­vanise-walled house. A 13-year-old girl who looks af­ter her fa­ther and paral­ysed un­cle re­ports rape and is gunned down. An am­putee climbs steps to his house on a hill.

The heart-rend­ing sto­ries are many. They haunt. Vir­tu­al­ly all these peo­ple lived in one-room gal­vanised or ply­board homes with­out pipe-borne wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. Like most of us, they as­pire to have a bet­ter life. They live in hope, fight­ing los­ing bat­tles.

It is true there will al­ways be pover­ty, and it is true that Gov­ern­ment as­sists many. But in this land of Moko Jumbies who politi­cise and racialise pover­ty and crime, peo­ple prob­a­bly take lit­tle time to un­der­stand the de­mo­graph­ics. Hum­ble liv­ing is not ab­solute pover­ty, and sin­gle par­ents have nur­tured bil­lions of pro­duc­tive and dis­ci­plined peo­ple since the birth of hu­mankind. So, it’s nec­es­sary to un­der­stand the nu­ances of pover­ty.  

We of­ten hear about the bas­ket of gov­ern­ment so­cial ser­vices help­ing the poor and as­sist­ing youth to lead pro­duc­tive lives, but what we hear is shal­low, as there are no sta­tis­tics on the so­cial in­vest­ment re­turns. What en­gen­ders our in­creas­es in crime and de­pri­va­tion? How many re­cip­i­ents of fi­nan­cial grants have mi­grat­ed to self-suf­fi­cien­cy? Do ro­bust strate­gies ex­ist, in­clud­ing mea­sur­able key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors? Are there da­ta col­lec­tion and analy­sis method­olo­gies, gen­er­at­ing ob­jec­tive de­ci­sions on pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion? Does the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment lever­age tech­nol­o­gy and da­ta an­a­lyt­ics to as­sist in val­ue cre­ation? How do they iden­ti­fy who gen­uine­ly needs help? To what ex­tent do we in­vest in pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, rather than hap­less­ly en­trench­ing pover­ty lifestyles? For ex­am­ple, when the gov­ern­ment fails to col­lect hous­ing rents for years, what mes­sage does that send?

In the wake of cit­i­zens hav­ing to pay an in­crease of up to 60 per cent on elec­tric­i­ty rates, how does T&TEC de­ter­mine who gets the 35 per cent re­bate on the bi-month­ly billing of $300 or less? Well, present­ly, of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 470,000 T&TEC ac­tive do­mes­tic ac­counts, 220,000 or 47 per cent of the house­holds get a re­bate. With the new rate in­crease that num­ber would be sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced, but the Gov­ern­ment has said it will sup­port the “vul­ner­a­ble”. That’s okay. But do 47 per cent of house­holds live in pover­ty, mean­ing they have no ac­cess to the ne­ces­si­ties of life—ed­u­ca­tion, health, run­ning wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, an ac­cept­able liv­ing stan­dard, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty? What part do pol­i­tics play in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of so­cial wel­fare dol­lars? What is the role of lo­cal gov­ern­ment in iden­ti­fy­ing the gen­uine­ly vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties?

The im­ages of peo­ple liv­ing and dy­ing in ab­ject pover­ty shat­ter all sense of hu­man­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, and be­lief that the $5.0 bil­lion spent an­nu­al­ly on so­cial de­vel­op­ment and fam­i­ly ser­vices reach­es the most vul­ner­a­ble. Grant­ed, the Gov­ern­ment helps some, and with­out such help, crime and the na­tion­al qual­i­ty of life would be worse.

One has the im­pres­sion that the loss of com­mu­ni­ty close­ness or so­cial co­he­sion in neigh­bour­hoods, vil­lages, and towns has had a pro­found ef­fect on peo­ple’s men­tal health and wel­fare. The me­dia cam­eras cap­ture the iso­la­tion of some. Once up­on a time, the church­es, NGOs, and ma­cos knew every mam­my, pap­py, granny, and child in their com­mu­ni­ties. The per­va­sive­ness of crime has had a dis­as­trous im­pact on com­mu­ni­ty life. Nev­er­the­less, giv­en the fi­nan­cial, hu­man, and tech­no­log­i­cal re­sources avail­able be­tween cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ments, is it un­rea­son­able to sus­pect that there’s a lack of dili­gence in the so­cial wel­fare bu­reau­cra­cy? When the me­dia high­light is­sues, we hear that the so­cial ser­vices di­vi­sion knew of the cir­cum­stances and reached out, as was the case for the fa­ther of the two tod­dlers

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found in the street and liv­ing in a ro­dent-in­fest­ed home. We learned that the fa­ther had de­clined a work of­fer, but wasn’t there an oblig­a­tion to the chil­dren? Sub­se­quent­ly, the me­dia re­port­ed that one of the par­ents has “de­vel­op­men­tal” chal­lenges. The case re­vealed the scope of pover­ty, cap­tur­ing its di­men­sions and nu­ances–ed­u­ca­tion, men­tal health, chil­dren’s safe­ty, liv­ing con­di­tions, and cul­ture.

Pover­ty is the lack of ac­cess to the es­sen­tials of life. The fact that the Gov­ern­ment of­fers so­cial ser­vices doesn’t mean every­one can ac­cess them. There are many is­sues, in­clud­ing il­lit­er­a­cy, health, ad­dic­tion, and men­tal chal­lenges. Some have no birth cer­tifi­cates—nev­er had—and con­se­quent­ly no ID cards. The min­istry makes in­for­ma­tion avail­able on web­sites, so­cial and tra­di­tion­al me­dia, but if even they had ac­cess to com­put­ers and in­ter­net, some can’t read or write. Some are afraid for what­ev­er rea­son. Some ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of pover­ty be­cause of job loss­es.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 stu­dents com­plete the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Ex­am­i­na­tions an­nu­al­ly. Our job mar­ket is lim­it­ed and can­not ab­sorb all the sec­ondary school and uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates need­ing jobs. Many with de­grees seek to mi­grate. So, we are fair game for los­ing the best qual­i­fied. Oth­ers suf­fer de­pres­sion at home; yet oth­ers–add the school dropouts–are tar­gets for crim­i­nal en­gage­ment.

Is it not pos­si­ble to help many more of the ab­solute poor, es­ti­mat­ed to be about 12-15,000? Like the moth­er and daugh­ter who were burnt to death in a house of gal­vanise. Had any­one from lo­cal gov­ern­ment or so­cial ser­vices ever vis­it­ed them? Ac­cord­ing to re­ports about the life of one Ms Ram­per­sad, she and her son, who suf­fers from haemophil­ia, lived on the street for two weeks. She used to car­ry him on her back be­fore a good Samar­i­tan do­nat­ed a wheel­chair. The Land Set­tle­ment Agency and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies reached out to her, but it is re­port­ed that some nights she and her son drink on­ly wa­ter.

Hope­ful­ly, it is peo­ple in such cir­cum­stances, and oth­ers like­ly to be­come vul­ner­a­ble, who would be giv­en pref­er­ence for gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance.

What is the pover­ty rate in T&T? It’s like pulling teeth to get that, but re­view­ing nu­mer­ous sources, in­clud­ing CSO, UNDP and the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion re­ports, it ap­pears that the av­er­age is be­tween 25 and 30 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, most be­ing chil­dren.

Does the so­cial ser­vices dol­lar reach the most vul­ner­a­ble? Ob­ser­va­tions and sta­tis­tics sug­gest it does not.