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CASTRIES, CASTRIES – WHO SHALL SAVE YOU?

By in Print

Former Prime Minister Sir John Compton, in the swearing- in ceremony of the last administration he led, indicated that a “girdle of slums which surrounds our city is a veritable incubator for crime that threatens our daily lives.” He went on to inform the nation that The Ministry of Housing, Urban Renewal and Local Government had been given the challenge “to tackle the problem with determination and imagination”.  Seven years after his death, his desire for that change has not occurred. As a La Tocian ( resident of La Toc), I drive from to Castries with great sadness as I look at how a strip of land from Tapion to Manoel Street has been left in total decay. SLASPA has virtually abandoned their responsibility. Yet this is the entrance to Castries, our capital. When Sir John shared his thoughts seven years ago, as a former Chief Engineer who had worked with him, I felt led to put...

UNIVERSAL SECONDARY EDUCATION – A FAILED EXPERIMENT?

By in Print

For 52 of my 52 years on Earth, I have had been involved in the teaching profession, my grandfather was a teacher, my father was a teacher, my aunt was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my wife teaches. I have taught for over 40 yrs, whether it was teaching my friends in my neighbourhood at the age of 12 some basic maths, to Form One to Form 5 students  in my adult years  as my contribution to their development. Several years ago when Universal Secondary Education was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago, I recall a conversation with my sister in which she lamented the decision as she was experiencing the failure of the system in the school she taught. Successive Governments have attempted to bring reform in Trinidad and I believe that there is acknowledgment there, that errors were made. In St Lucia we implemented Universal Secondary Education and we have covered our eyes seemingly...

AUSTERITY OR EFFICIENCY – WHICH FIRST?

By in Print

In the field of physics and astronomy there is a principle called escape velocity. Escape velocity is the speed that an object needs to be traveling to break free of a planet’s gravitational pull. An object leaving the surface of Earth needs to be going 7 miles per second, or nearly 25,000 miles per hour to leave without falling back to the surface. Economists have also embraced the term to describe the need for an economy to grow at a sufficiently fast rate to escape a recession and to return to a long run rate of economic growth. In carrying the analogy further, the escape velocity will change depending on the size of the planet. The smaller the planet the lower will be the escape velocity. However it is not so, small island states somehow need higher growth rates to escape a recession and to have a long run rate of economic growth. The ECCB has suggested a rate of around 7% for St....

TROUBLED BRIDGES – TROUBLED WATERS

By in Print

In 1970 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had put together a song called – Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters, which became a hit and has remained as one of the classics of that era. The Bible speaks of a crippled man who sat for 38 years waiting for the angel to come down to trouble the water so that he can receive his healing. He missed every opportunity because someone else went in before him until Jesus came and he received his miracle. So for 2000 years or more we have understood the phrase – Troubled Waters. It has been etched in our spiritual lives. Within recent months we have now come to an understanding of the phrase -Troubled Bridges. We first had the Bonne Terre Bridge, built as four lanes with an alignment that now suggests that the new Hotel being constructed will be affected if the road is so widened. Both the horizontal and vertical alignments are wrong, the support...

WHERE IS THE ROAD MAP TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY?

By in Print

One of the mistakes I believe the Government of St Lucia made, was not to fully articulate a road map to the population as to how we are to climb ourselves out of this miry fiscal clay. While the 5% pay cut has dominated the discussions, by the government’s own admission, this measure will create a saving of less than 20% of the budget deficit for this year. It does not solve the problem. The Government of Barbados has to be applauded in that they chose to present such a road map to the country and have created a nineteen (19) month Fiscal Adjustment Programme and a Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy. The Fiscal Adjustment Programme has fifty eight (58) budgetary policies and the Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy has four hundred and fifty nine (459) strategic initiatives. St. Lucia must do the same. We cannot be running around as headless chickens splattering blood...