Gimme, gimme syndrome

By Bukka Rennie
December 10, 2003

Sometimes you are left to wonder if there is no longer any sense of social justice and equality existing in this world. It appears as if the human being in general has suddenly become bereft of compassion, this most defining quality of being human.

Recently we came across two blatant examples of this; one from the local scenario, the other from the international political stage. Sometime last week this arrant nonsense appeared in one of the local newspapers:

"...the purpose of the crash programme (ie government-generated jobs) was to avoid violence and other deviant behaviour among the youth living along the East-West Corridor...

"As the years passed, bloc-o-rama and Better Village were added to the programme... the underlying purpose was to subdue the rebelling youth who were considered school dropouts...

"The culture, as it was called, absorbed the entire East-West corridor and eventually started affecting the social and economic structures of our society, so much so that the nation was considered developing a DEWD mentality...a gimme gimme syndrome and a 'ten-days' attitude...

"Meanwhile the Central and South were developing a culture of their own..."

For the sheer weight of its mindlessness, these words will prove forever to be hard to beat. To begin with the negative view of "crash programmes", it is essential we point out that every society, particularly those in this modern world with economies organised and interrelated such as they are, must institute social measures to take care of the less fortunate, people hemmed-in by whatever limitations, who find it difficult to compete and get on, far less get ahead.

In our own historic context, the reality of the State organising public works in the crash-programme format of maintenance, cleaning and construction gangs, started way back in the colonial days and continued even when Cipriani was mayor of Port-of-Spain. So it is nothing peculiar to the after-Independence period.

Societies around the world have utilised other forms, some distributing funds directly to the needy and the unemployed as "welfare" or "dole".

As everywhere else in the world, in the initial stages, there was a percentage of people who were inclined to stay with the crash programmes permanently, whereas the larger majority used the programmes as temporary measure, as a stepping stone, until they independently acquired new skills and moved on and ahead.

What, however, has happened in recent times because of the intense competition between producers and the massive influx of high-tech equipment and machinery, the unemployeds have increased in numbers significantly and can no longer be viewed as a temporary social grouping, as workers momentarily out of work, but as a distinct grouping with their own view of the world and with their own specific relationship to it.

Ironically, it was as a result of such a process that organisations like the Blackpool Sports and Cultural Club of Tunapuna emerged and created "bloc-o-ramas" as an independent economic measure to raise income and so gave new language to the country of T&T. It was "culture" emerging and had nothing to do with any "gimme, gimme syndrome"; in fact it was quite the opposite.

In addition, the crash programmes brought new life to the steelband movement in the 1960s as income from these jobs provided drum-sets and new musical instruments, ushering in the period of "sponsorship" or corporate partnerships that brought the glorious period of pan development that has resulted today in pan being a multi-billion dollar international industry only waiting for its potential to be harnessed by interchanging "recalcitrant" governments.

It is a deep-seated malaise that we, here, prove again and again to be unable to "see" what lies right beneath our own noses. Oil and gas alone will not cut it for us. The day has to come when we will come to understand that what we have most to package and sell the world is our "head", the very same "culture" of the East-West Corridor that we love so much to disparage.

The writer of the nonsense quoted above provides a good example of those who dwell only on the negatives, and to cap that off he sought to sell us the typical erroneous view that there is a "culture" that is somehow different in Central and South.

Nothing is further from the truth. T&T comprises by and large one open, urban, island culture. The days when there may have been a rural culture that was distinct are long gone. We are geographically too small for such distinction to have prevailed. It became quite clear when the government that was supposed to be rural-based came to power and the very same URP and crash programmes and "10-days" attitude became quite the order of the day in Central and South.

And what could be more "gimme gimme" than the slew of government contracts that were then handed out in a frenzy without any regard to tendering procedures or the huge bonuses that State enterprises began to pay out to top and middle management.

In fact, some $170 million in such bonuses were paid to just a small elite group of officers by State companies that were even losing money. Petrotrin paid out bonuses to the tune of $48 million; FCB $27 million; Plipdeco $12 million; NGC $11 million; and even the two deadbeats Caroni (1975) Ltd and National Broadcasting Network, $48,000 and $43,000, respectively.

CEPEP, on the other hand, involves some 101 contractors employing over 5,500 people. What defines "gimme gimme"? Income distribution to an elite clique or income distribution to the many?

On the international scene, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien goes to Africa to tell the African countries how to behave if they wish to "emerge from their economic morass."

"Help yourself!" he says, by creating a "climate that is good for investments" from the metropoles. "There's nothing more nervous than a million dollars... it doesn't speak English, it doesn't speak French, it doesn't speak German, and it moves fast..." given any signs of disquiet and upheaval.

It is as if Walter Rodney never lived and never wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. It is as if Africans on the continent are dumb to the fact that their land mass contains every mineral known to mankind in super-commercial quantities; that it has been as a result of the interest of competing European States and corporations in controlling and extracting that mineral wealth that has served from ever since to intensify distrusts among Africans and foster bloody localised conflicts which are today still ongoing.

The civil instability is yet to chase any major investor out of Africa. They thrive on the instability. It keeps the countries of Africa disunited, disoriented and too weak to negotiate and re-negotiate their way forward in the modern world. And Chretien has the audacity to go to Africa to tell people how to behave if some "development" is to be thrown their way.

It is time for the Organisation of African Unity to become a prime mover in modern world politics and to dictate their own path forward. No handouts will help, "gimme gimme" is not a development option. New, young Mandelas need to emerge, since the old Mandela is exactly that, old.