‘BE GRATEFUL’

THE Prime Minister yesterday pleaded with citizens to stop “bad-talking” TT and being ungrateful for what they have.

At the sod-turning ceremony for the new Sangre Grande hospital yesterday, Dr Rowley responded to a caller to a radio talk show who was upset that he told the world at the UN General Assembly last week, that TT had a poverty eradication programme – old-age pension.

“I took the opportunity to address the general assembly and the world as to who is TT, what we represent, what we stand for. In that speech, I made a statement which had to do with health care for particularly women and adolescents, and also the reduction of poverty. I put on the record TT’s position on reduction of poverty.”

Rowley said most of the comments he received were positive.

“But at some time, I knew we would get back to normalcy and some people will begin to say that what was said about TT sounded too good and would have to be rectified and corrected. So said, so done.

“She (the caller) sounded quite articulate – intelligent-sounding. But she was irate and very upset. In fact, she said she was insulted by the fact that the PM could have gone to the general assembly and to have made a statement so obscene that there is, in TT, a poverty eradication programme.”

Rowley said he was not surprised to hear that because we took so much for granted.

“We are a people who are raising our children...some of us have been raised in an environment of entitlement and, as a result of that, many of us don’t know where we came from. (We are) vex about where we are, and vex like hell about where we going, not realising that we are doing a whole lot better than a whole lot of people in this world.”

Rowley said his was a big title, that of PM, but he was also a citizen.

“I came from a little village in Mason Hall in Tobago, just another country boy going to school barefoot. Well fed because we fed ourselves, grew our own food, raised our own chickens. Children had to work toward their own well-being. You had to clean the yard, you had to cut the grass, you had to work in that garden. You end up being well fed because of that, but money was in short supply.”

Rowley said while he and others in similar situations were poor, they were very happy. He said there were times when the only cash in the household came from a poverty-eradication programme which was old-age pension which his grandfather had qualified for.

“That pension was $14 a month. That raised me and lots of children in the community. I don’t know where I might have been if it wasn’t for that. That $14 has grown over my lifetime to $40 and then $75. And when it went to $100 it was a big thing. I was alive, happily, when it got to $1,000 and today it is $3,000.”

He said in the last budget $4.7 billion, with an additional $227 million, was allocated to the Social Development Ministry.

“This is handed to the deserving families, hopefully, because some undeserving ones get it too. That cash is handed out to people to make their way in the country, and I have to be accosted by a lady who is so angry, so upset, that the PM could have told the United Nations that we have a poverty-eradication programme in our country and she felt insulted.”

Rowley said the cash comes straight from the treasury with no contribution from the recipient. He said it was our social safety net and was not available in every Caribbean country.

He spoke about attending a funeral recently and the priest called on the mourners to stop bad-talking TT.

“Education is free, yet you take it for granted and bad-talk the country at every opportunity. Yes, we have a lot of problems and a lot of things are far from perfect, but this constant bad-talking of your country as if you are living in a hell-hole...”