Saturday, 21 March 2015

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

JULIET PORTILLO The Caribbean is beautiful. Beautiful scenery, lovely beaches, food, music....but is that the only realities of the Caribbean. What about the ugly truth POVERTY. What exactly is poverty? Should we blame neoliberal globalization? should we try to hide it behind walls like we did when the US president came to visit Trinidad and Tobago? How do we deal with poverty? are individuals the cause of their own poverty? According to Hebe Verrest and Rhoda Reddock attention was drawn to UNDP statistics on poverty in the Human Development Report 2004 which stated that approx.12% of the population was living on less than US$1 a day and 39% on less than US$2 a day in Trinidad and Tobago. WE ARE PRODUCERS OF NATURAL GAS AND PETROLEUM yet everyday we observe poverty that contradicts the perceived buoyant economic situation in the country and the government's commitment to poverty reduction. What can we do about poverty? Can we escape globalization or find other ways to minimize its impact? Since we in the Caribbean are quite vulnerable to external shocks we have according to Jessica Byron 'inadequate resources to devote to devising strategies for participating effectively in the new global order.'A new global strategy against poverty needs to be mounted(UNDP POVERTY REPORT 2000) poverty continues however despite strategies used or proposed.
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  1. Global Uprising22 March 2015 at 10:46

    When we think about security, we need to think beyond battalions and borders. We need to think about human security, about winning a different war, the fight against poverty. (Wolfensohn, 2000).

    While the gap between the rich and poor is extreme the distance between the wealth and the rest is growing steadily. Poverty is Haiti is connected to inequality. A small percentage of the population is rich and everyone else lives in poverty. The government is attempting to erect solid tents for those who are living in make shift tents but there are insufficient land space. The few rich who owns the land are resisting having their property being use to shelter the poor. Surely the government is unlikely to prevail against them because their wealth makes them very politically powerful. They can topple the government if they so choose. The government cannot force them to do anything, let alone to allow their land to be used for shelter for the poor. If this is not inequality then what!
    C. Samuel

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