BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, May 7th, 2014 (TUCOM) -- Labour Day 2014 met our workers suffering an onslaught on many fronts – healthcare, unemployment and underemployment, education, security and safety, and an economy in trouble. Such a situation is regrettable and could have been avoided had prudent advice been listened to and acted upon, and had the now illegitimate Douglas administration brought sincerity, concern and competence to the management of the business of workers in particular and the people of St. Kitts and Nevis, in general.
At the macro level, our workers are dealing with an economy that has contracted every year since 2008 except in 2013 when we posted an anemic growth rate of 1.3 percent. That rate fell significantly short of the 5.0 to 7.0 percent advocated by Governor of the ECCB, Sir K. Dwight Venner, as being necessary to maintain an adequate standard of living in the country.
As local businesses lose economic incentives and cut back on investment, workers in all major economic sectors, tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and financial services, lose their jobs, income and means of supporting their families. Meanwhile, escalating costs of food and electricity, as well as burdensome taxes such as the VAT, rapidly eat away at dwindling personal savings. Hence, business and consumer confidence wane and our economy languishes, persistently malfunctioning under a government with ephemeral vision and no new ideas.
With tourism, the engine of our economy, sputtering, stay-over visitor numbers and total visitor expenditure have not returned to pre-2008 levels. Available hotel rooms at the St. Kitts Marriott have fallen some fifty percent from over seven hundred to under four hundred. Frigate Bay Beach Hotel is now out of business and so is the Golden Lemon Hotel. Other local hoteliers have had to convert their properties, in varying degrees, to student dorms just to stay afloat. Jack Tar is ninety percent student dorm; Sugar Bay Resort is at fifty percent and Bird Rock Beach has some 20 percent rooms dedicated to students.
All this whilst the illegitimate Douglas administration forces local hoteliers, without incentives, to compete on an uneven playing field with foreigners who receive substantial fiscal and other incentives to construct and operate hotels using our passport money. And so, with the tourism sector on the decline, service gratuities for workers have fallen precipitously, posing additional hardship on those making a mere minimum wage.
New jobs should have been created in the green energy sector. Alas, there is nothing to shout about. Geothermal, solar and wind projects languish haplessly without a legitimate, competent, comprehensive policy and development strategy. Consequently, real opportunities for investment in the sector to create meaningful, high paying, sustainable employment continue to evade our local entrepreneurs, technical professionals and service providers.
St. Kitts and Nevis is on the wrong track under the current illegitimate government, led by a “galloping dictator”. Only under a new government of national unity, led by the competent and experienced Dr. the Hon. Timothy Harris, will our country be redeemed as a fledgling democracy and taken to new and higher levels of growth, development and prosperity.
A TEAM UNITY government will set about immediately to secure the country’s socio-economic fabric that has come apart perilously over the past years. The signs of failure are everywhere. Unemployment at more than twenty percent; the Poverty rate on the increase and now at some thirty-three percent; our country disgraced globally, having the second highest Debt-to-GDP rate in the world and the second highest homicide rate in the world, all in the same year.
Meanwhile, our Police Force remains perennially underserved by an illegitimate government that forces them to work without adequate critical resources, in unsuitable conditions, without reasonable compensation. And so many officers have no choice but to put themselves and the country’s security at risk by working second and third jobs just to feed their families. Like many other workers in this country, they work long, hard hours to avoid the embarrassment of a crammed and overflowing debtors’ jail.
The nation’s present illegitimate leadership is corrupt, delusional, self-centered, hardhearted and incompetent, as epitomized by its protracted mismanagement of the current Basseterre High School health crisis. On Labour day 2014, under the SKN Labour Party, that is our social and economic reality.
In our continuing efforts to restore, strengthen and expand social and economic justice in St. Kitts and Nevis, TEAM UNITY takes the opportunity on this appropriate and illustrious occasion for workers, to reiterate our commitment to:
- Return the lands to you the people so you can: revive your hopes and dreams of building a home for your family; set up a commercial farm; open a mechanic shop; embark upon other enterprises that provide meaningful, steady employment and income whilst restoring and building dignity of work;
- Reduce mortgages for those in homes provided by/through government;
- Reduce the cost of living by removing VAT on food and medicine;
- Introduce true universal healthcare;
- Upgrade and properly maintain our health and education institutions;
- Free-up and universalize Pre-school Education thereby making education free from preschool to secondary school;
- Pay former sugar workers the additional $16 million that is still owed to them by government;
- Strengthen the Labour Department’s capacity and capability to respond and resolve Labour disputes quickly and effectively;
- Capitalize the Severance Fund so that laid-off workers can access their due entitlements quickly;
- Compensate government workers injured in the line of duty;
- Assist and regularly consult with Trade Unions on matters of significance to industrial peace and harmony, and the overall growth and development of the country.
The workers of this country…the people of this country…female and male…young and old…all want and deserve better. And that is why, as we celebrate Labour day 2014, TEAM UNITY promises ALL that, under a government of national unity, your fortunes will change for the better, because we are together for better and we are better together.
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