Disclose true economic impact of lockdown

THE EDITOR: The Great Chinese Famine is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions, some say as many as 55 million, yet the leadership continued to downplay the state of the economy.

Whether it's South Sudan or neighbouring Venezuela, it is difficult if not impossible to focus on failing economic policies when your attention is fixed solely on putting food on the table.

How can we possibly be bothered by the fact that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD’s) World Investment Report for 2021, has shown that among all the countries in the Caribbean, including Haiti, TT suffered the worse in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2020 with negative FDI in the hundreds of millions of US dollars.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs would perfectly explain why the country didn't blink twice at Standard and Poor's (S&P) revision from stable to negative on a "weaker economy."

Even the Prime Minister’s erroneous natural immunity rant seemed to have been swept under the carpet, because people simply have no energy to fight against the mismanagement any more. We are all laser-focused on staying afloat.

As for Dr Rowley's natural immunity rant, I am disappointed at the lack of comment by the medical fraternity. Imagine silence after our Prime Minister says that 200,000 people won't need the vaccine because they would have recovered from a virus they didn't even know they had. Actually, disappointed may be too harsh a word, after all just recently Dr Marlene Attz spoke about the lack of poverty statistics due to a fear of victimisation.

Even economist and former Central Bank deputy governor Dr Terrence Farrell has called for data. According to him, ole talk about needy and greedy has been substituted for poverty data, but Farrell suggested the problem in TT is even deeper – we do not know poverty in TT because we do not want to know.

This "culture of secrecy" as referred to by Farrell once again reminds me of tyrannical behaviour, as Hong Kong pulled the curtain down on its free press in June of this year. Compare that to a PNM minister giving lone access to state-media at a public event.

A country that once was the gem of the Caribbean has now found itself at the bottom of the totem pole. Who would have thought that we would come in last to Haiti on any economic report? Yet, our citizens have been purposely kept at the basic needs level in a purposeful attempt by this administration to cover up its abject failures.

This pandemic has given us an opportunity to rise to the top, to show the world our ingenious, our tenacity and our creativity in handling crises, but instead we've held on like little losers, rejoicing and taking advantage of the perfect little excuse that covid19 has brought to our once prosperous shores.

It is time for our democracy to be restored. Tell us the true economic impact of this pandemic. Produce true poverty statistics. Open the economy and allow our citizens the right to earn an income. Lead our citizens into the top tiers of self-actualisation.

This pandemic is not going to be done any time soon. We are already wearing masks in our cars as we drive with family members because of this administration’s failure to regularise the PH taxi situation. Their failure to enforce public health guidelines should not be borne by the most vulnerable in society. Get it together and do the job that you spent millions of dollars campaigning and convincing us you could do.

Marsha L Walker

via e-mail