Comprehensive debt reduction Plan for Grenada
By William Doyle-Marshall
“We cannot turn around this country over night. We cannot turn it around by ourselves. There are thousands of people in our country who are hurting at this time: single female parents without work; youths without hope, some without skills; parents who cannot send their children to school because they do not have the means to pay the bus, to provide food for them to eat.”
Grenada’s newly elected Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchel left this message with his nationals in the Greater Toronto Area last Friday. He was here on personal business and took the opportunity to talk with them about recent political developments back home. He promised not to do as was the tradition to blame the previous government for everything that went wrong. But it was difficult to avoid what he described as Grenada’s financial plight where the Tillman Thomas government sold state assets to pay salaries.
Unity, economic development, education, the country’s health system and the generation of young people were among issues the Prime Minister said are high on the agenda. Dr. Mitchell promised to embark on a comprehensive debt reduction initiative. He read to the gathering a note from the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. The note, according to the Prime Minister, states the Government of Grenada is moving swiftly to address the heavy debt burden as part of the broader general strategy to stabilize the macro economic conditions and improve the country’s growth outlook.
“When you reach the point of selling state national assets to pay salaries, you are in real trouble,” Dr. Mitchell stated. He asked his listeners to try having a business and selling parts of it every month to pay workers. In a short period of time there would naturally be no business. The previous government in its own wisdom, unfortunately so, close down the parliament for seven months therefore could not borrow and to keep itself in office, the only thing it could have done was to sell assets. The government unfortunately sold all the shares in the telephone company, the shares in the Grenada Breweries were sold and all the shares in Grenlec – the only electricity service. That is a burden to the population because of the high cost of electricity, making it uncompetitive for Grenada to do serious business in the region. All those things were done with no announcements to the population. “We are now finding out the details of those. And we have to put the facts before the population as to the state of the finances of the country,” Prime Minister Mitchell disclosed.
The NNP Government is looking at its embassies abroad and assessing the personnel and performances. Dr. Mitchell said his team would be looking at government’s resources to be able to meet representation. There will be a leaner budgeting for Foreign Affairs. “Until we have the resources to be able to have several staff abroad to represent the country, we cannot continue,” he disclosed. The Prime Minister has personal difficulty when he sees a hospital without basic medication; when people are literally being told to go and die and yet government is supporting a massive overload outside there. “In some cases we cannot justify it. In conscience I have a problem. With the challenges we are facing financially, we have to move to deal with that problem. When the resources are available then we could have as much as we wish to have,” he explained. The Prime Minister confessed being distraught as the country is nearly losing a generation of young people. As a result he promised that the NNP Government is going to spend much resources as possible to ensure that the Ministry of Youth will be one of the most aggressively run ministries in the country. “The young people expect us. Whether it is the area of training, scholarships, job creation, rehabilitation,” he added.
Dr. Mitchell recalled choking up at church the Sunday following election as he thought about the young people he saw during the election campaigns. “I could not keep myself up. They expect us to save them. You cannot send your children out and have them go to university outside and come back home with tremendous success educationally – masters’ degrees – and for three years not a job. In some case you tell them ‘is not we that send you’.
The Prime Minister emphasized they are the children of Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique -- our future.” It’s wrong to classify them as NDC children and NNP children, Dr. Mitchell continued.
He was emphatic that the NNP cannot run a government that does not show enough empathy for those who are hurting. Government is supposed to be there for all citizens but government must zero in on the vulnerable in the society – those who need us the most, he affirmed. “If we fail to do that we are preparing an unjust society and we’ll pay a heavy price for that,” Dr. Mitchell concluded.
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