An­na-Lisa Paul

As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to rage across the world with no sign of slow­ing down, a lo­cal be­hav­iour­al change con­sul­tant says the State can­not con­tin­ue to pro­vide hand-outs to cit­i­zens with­out any pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in ex­change.

Claim­ing there is an ur­gent need for the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to do ex­act­ly what its’ name says, Franklyn Dol­ly said greater ef­forts must be made to de­vel­op the skills and tal­ents of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

He said, “Just giv­ing mon­ey to main­tain peo­ple and there is no pro­duc­tiv­i­ty out of it, is mon­ey that has to be spent every month and I do not think the State has that kind of funds to con­tin­ue do­ing this.”

Claim­ing that every­one con­tributed in some way to the col­lec­tion of tax­es when they pay Val­ue Added Tax, he sug­gest­ed cer­tain ar­eas of the econ­o­my could be ex­pand­ed to in­clude per­sons who are cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed.

Cit­ing agri­cul­ture as one of the main sec­tors that would ben­e­fit from such an arrange­ment, Dol­ly ex­plained, “All of these peo­ple who are able-bod­ied, could be placed in­to some­thing where they can be pro­duc­tive. With COVID-19 and the need for so­cial dis­tanc­ing, agri­cul­ture al­lows for this and al­so for them to pro­duce a good which will go to­wards feed­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion by ex­ten­sion.”

Oth­ers, he said could be ab­sorbed in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­duc­tion sec­tors, as they are taught can­ning and pre­serv­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles, while the craft in­dus­try could al­so be tapped in­to.

Ad­vo­cat­ing for a psy­cho­log­i­cal change across so­ci­ety, Dol­ly said cit­i­zens need­ed to stop think­ing that some­one must em­ploy them, but rather that they pos­sess skills they are sell­ing to an em­ploy­er.

He said, “That is the new psy­chol­o­gy per­sons must have. Stop think­ing that af­ter I leave school, some­one must em­ploy me…no. You have to think…I have cer­tain skills and knowl­edge that I can sell or rent.”

Con­firm­ing her min­istry had al­ready be­gun this trans­for­ma­tion via the Sow­ing Em­pow­er­ment through En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment (SEED) Pro­gramme, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox re­vealed that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od of March 16 to present – a to­tal of 23 SEED grants to­talling $319,538.89, were award­ed to per­sons.

The SEED grant pro­vides fund­ing of up to $15,000 for ap­proved start-ups in var­i­ous sec­tors in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, food and bev­er­age, per­son­al care ser­vices/prod­ucts, print­ing and pack­ag­ing as well as, re­tail ser­vices.

Pre­sent­ing com­par­a­tive fig­ures for the pe­ri­od March to Au­gust 2019 as she said 112 ap­pli­ca­tions had been re­ceived; Cox said 27 ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived dur­ing March to Au­gust 2020.

She not­ed that a pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion was be­cause, “The op­er­a­tions of the de­part­ment which is re­spon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing the SEED grant were sus­pend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the as­sis­tance of the staff of that Di­vi­sion with the pro­cess­ing of COVID re­lief grants.”

A to­tal num­ber of SEED grants ap­proved for fis­cal 2020 was 26.