Black people and their head for business

THE EDITOR: Claire Gomez-Miller, the executive chairman of Clico, was quoted in a recent news story as having said that “one of her dreams is to establish a Clico Cyril Duprey museum.”

Current in the news is the report of conflct between Shanghai Construction and Udecott over the contract for building the central block of the Port of Spain General Hospital.

Farley Augustine recently said that small contractors will be given consideration when development projects are being implemented in Tobago,

There has been so much fruitless discussion over the past few decades about the need for the diversification of the economy that it has become tiresome to read the many proposals because they are not getting at the root of the problem.

There is a connection between all the matters above, in the sense that our country needs to be inspired by what Duprey accomplished, given the oppressive circumstances under which people who looked like him had to live in 1937 when he founded Clico; and given the fact that there is no one like him presently.

Over the past few decades, the politicians of African descent have not sought to motivate their followers to take the road of self-reliance and innovativenes. If Duprey’s story is told it will be seen that he brought new mechanisms to the sale of insurance products so that they could be afforded by the “small man.” And he succeeded in building the biggest insurance company in the country.

It is heartening to see that Augustine sees the need for that motivation. Don’t focus on doing corrupt deals out of self-interest!

When Duprey was building Clico there were successful black businessmen in other industries, construction being one. If competition had been fostered in the industry, we wouldn’t need Shanghai. The question needs to be asked: why didn’t those black-owned companies survive? Young scholars in sociology and political economics at UWI may find the topic an interesting one for a thesis dissertation.

There were also successful commercial enterprises owned by black businessmen of Duprey’s generation. Bukka Rennie has written about the Downtown Businessmen’s Association who were all black “and controlled from Henry Street to Nelson Street, and Park Street to Marine Square (now Independence Square). We know who now owns Port of Spain lock, stock and barrel. How did that come about? Maybe some of the older politicians can explain before they pass on.

Fortunately the present hard times seem to be making many young people of African descent seek their survival by being entrepreneurial. They need to be fully encouraged. They have the example of some of their forebears who achieved success, even under the yoke of the colonial oppressors.

ARTHUR NURSE

via e-mail