Pray not to become afflicted with any serious illness.
Especially if you live in a country-like ours-whose good, hard-working doctors, nurses and other medical service providers, with their limited back-up resources, are unable to save you.
Or in a country-like ours-which doesn’t, as a matter of state policy, have a proper medical and health care insurance scheme for its people.
So unless you’re rich and/or you have good insurance coverage, your life can be cut cruelly short.
And to me that’s a crime, especially in a country whose leader is a medical doctor and whose Government is supposed to be sensitive to the preservation and enhancement of human life, and to the social and economic benefits of having a healthy and productive populace.
It’s bad enough that people have to worry about illness. It’s a thousand times worse when they don’t have the money to fight the illness and save their own lives or the lives of their children and other loved ones.
In my opinion, the absence of a proper insurance scheme is inhumane and is economically dumb.
Healthy people are more likely to be happy, productive, and independent.
Right now, when a poor or uninsured person in St. Kitts & Nevis gets seriously ill, too much financial (and totally unnecessary and avoidable) pressure is made to bear on family, friends, and the Government.
There’s a young mother who’s ill. She needs help.
But funds are extremely scarce.
She recently asked her employer to assist, and she was told: “Ask the PM”.
Her employer doesn’t have a medical insurance scheme for his workers, Social Security’s ability to provide full assistance to a case like this is quite restricted, the lady is already a poor person, and contributions from friends and well wishers can take her only so far, especially given the sorry state that our country is in.
Imagine how the young lady feels.
Today it’s her, tomorrow for you or someone close to you, or me.
I’m praying for her and I will assist in my own small way. And I invite you to do the same.
Meanwhile, her boss tells her to “Ask the PM”.
The boss knows that the Government is strapped for cash, so he was probably making the suggestion in the hope that the PM would go into his own pocket to help out the young lady.
Maybe the boss is unaware that the PM doesn’t spend a bad penny…of his own! Yours and mine, yes. He’ll spend that like a drunken sailor, but not his.
But while I hope that the lady’s boss was kind enough to assist her, he was also right that she should “Ask the PM”.
The PM has squandered our money, creating a fiscal and economic crisis in the process; he has mismanaged our affairs; he has destroyed the fabric of the Government and the society; he has made a mockery of governance and our nation’s Constitution; he has caused thousands of Kittitians and Nevisians to lose over $110 million-their life savings-in annuities in British American Insurance Company because of his lack of vigilance and concern; he has thrown well-off people into bankruptcy and near bankruptcy; and he has turned poor people into beggars.
So it’s only right and proper that whatever you, the people of this country, need you should indeed go and “Ask the PM” for it.
But don’t rely too much on his Tuesday morning radio program to get what you want. That program isn’t not really designed for him to answer any hard questions. You hear how he dances around them and how he takes forever with his ‘answers’. And you hear how he gets riled up and tries to insult callers who ask him the hard questions. Nor are his monthly press conferences designed for him to answer any hard questions, as can be attested by journalists who have faced his venom because they were simply trying to get the hard questions answered.
The fact is, he doesn’t like the hard questions.
The program and the monthly press conference are designed more for him to manipulate the media and the people than to inform them.
If you, the people, and the media, want to be more aggressive in your questioning of him, then that’d be great. It’s the hard questions that will save lives and save the country.
Meanwhile, if you have a question for him, you can also go look for him at his office, outside his office, on the street, at a function, at his home, or wherever else he hangs out. And when you see him, then you must “Ask the PM”.
Why should people suffer unnecessarily while he, who has caused so much of the suffering, gets a free ride? If a proper medical and health insurance scheme was in place, this young lady might be in far better health than she is today.
So we have to fight for her and for everybody who’s sick, and who’s going to be sick: that’s all of us. We have to “Ask the PM” the hard questions.
And if he keeps you waiting, while you wait, tell your story to whoever will listen. Talk or use a placard. Tell them you’re going to “Ask the PM” why he isn’t helping you with your medical bill, your electricity bill, your food bill, your children’s bills for school, your rent, your mortgage, your car repairs, your cable TV bill, your child support, your consumer loan, whatever!
Tell them you’re going to “Ask the PM” how much better our health care standards might’ve been had he not caused so much havoc to our finances and our economy; and how many poor people he thinks may have died unnecessarily as a result of his misguided and badly prioritized leadership.
Tell them you’re going to “Ask the PM” if he pays duty and VAT on personal things; if he pays for electricity or water; if he pays to put gas in his own car; and if he had been less extravagant in his travel and other habits, how much money could’ve been saved to care for, and to cure, ill people in this country.
Tell them you’re going to “Ask the PM” what his personal net worth and assets are.
Tell them you’re going to “Ask the PM” if it’s a coincidence that so many family properties are rented to resident diplomats; and if the lease of Llewellyn’s Haven to the Taiwanese Government had been completed before the passing of an Act of Parliament which was designed to facilitate, duty-free, the upgrade of visitor accommodation to 4-Star level for and after the 2007 Cricket World Cup; and, if so, if Llewellyn’s Haven was upgraded duty free and under that Act.
And finally, at least for the time being, tell them that you’re going to “Ask the PM” who were those stern-faced American men in suits visiting St. Kitts last week, and if he knows what they were doing here.
Remember, the PM spends as little time as possible in St. Kitts, so you have to be on the lookout for him.
Make sure that you catch him. And when you do, “Ask the PM”.
“Ask the PM” for the sake of the ill young mother.
And for the sake of every Kittitian and Nevisian born and yet unborn.
May God bless and save her, and us all.
