In
20 years’ time, this place will be a ghost town. The IMF’s Vision 2020
conjures illiterate poor people—some dying of HIV/Aids—squatting in
huge empty stadiums, empty trains clattering up and down the East-West
Corridor, a single flying blimp benignly watching the cut-throat survival
crime below.
Classrooms
will be used as playgrounds for illiterate knife and gun-wielding
children.
Thousands
are even now joining the huge band of over 500,000 existing functionally
illiterates in our country.
Professionals,
businessmen would long have left.
They
are leaving in their thousands even now, when money is floating in oil.
Foreign
investors will disappear entirely.
The
IMF has warned us. So has the UN. With our health and education in this
calamitous state, we have slid to the bottom of the development index.
By
2015, our oil wells will be dry. By 2025 there will be no natural gas
left.
Instead
of saving, diversifying, planning for the drought ahead, we are blowing
our money on a spending spree that is either stupid or corrupt, or both.
The
adjustment when the money has run out, according to the IMF, will be
“sudden and massive.”
The
IMF has expressed concern that the plethora of new bodies set up to spend
this largesse (outside the ambit of Parliament and Central Government)
will facilitate corruption.
The
Government that got into office decrying the wildly overblown budget for
the airport funds is spectacularly outdoing their predecessors.
Look
at what we throwing our money at now.
Minister
Keith Rowley recently announced that the Government should consider a
“light train transport” system for the East West Corridor at a
reported cost of $15 billion.
Assuming
that the $15-billion railway would last 50 years, at the rate of $300
million a year, the Government could put 430 large, manned maxi taxis
running 24 hours a day on our roads. Free. See rough calculations below to
put one maxi taxi on the road.
Cost
of 24-seat maxi taxi
(changed
over two years) $200,000
Cost
of drivers for
24
hours per day $240,000
Cost
of natural gas $30,000
Cost
of maintenance, etc $100,000
Profit
for maxi owner $120,000
Total
$690,000
Tarouba
Stadium
After
being condemned by every commentator, business organisation and even
religious groups, since no reasonable justification had been put forward,
Prime Minister Manning said the Tarouba Stadium was “necessary” as a
back-up in case Grenada was unable to host the cricket World Cup, because
of the damage it sustained in last year’s hurricane.
Has
the Prime Minister forgotten that his cabinet colleague had already
promised to fund the refurbishment of Grenada’s stadium?
Cost
of the Tarouba Stadium: $850,000,000
Cost
of rebuilding Grenada stadium $138,000,000
Obviously,
we should help the Grenadians and save some $700 million. We spend less
than $200 million a year on health capital expenditure. Imagine what we
could do with $700 million?
Refurbish
hospitals to First World standards, with state of the art equipment, total
access to drugs, hospital beds for all.
The
Blimp
Therefore,
for the cost of a blimp we could have 60 vehicles, properly manned, on a
24-hour basis at intersections at hot spots (Belmont, Laventille, East
Port-of-Spain) and save so many mothers tears, or establish Comp
stat—the computer system set up by the former Commissioner of Police in
New York Bernard Kerick, under which homicides dwindled rapidly. Then
there is the port which will be upgraded for $400 million and then knocked
down and built again for two billion, and so much more. Spend, spend,
spend. Like there’s no tomorrow.
Maybe
there won’t be a tomorrow. Vision 2020. White elephants in an eerie
ghost town.
Cost
of Blimp rental: $35,000,000
Cost
of seven officers
(needed
to man the vehicle) $420,000
Cost
of vehicle rental
(inclusive
of insurance, service, etc) $84,000
Cost
of gas $36,500
Cost
of equipment $35,000
Total
$575,500
