Seaga wants to focus on social reform Says he can’t wait any longer

AT 72, Edward Seaga says he is “a man in a hurry” to lead a fundamental overhaul of the quality of life of poor Jamaicans and suggests that if he wins the Government in coming elections he will not be detained by his 1980s quip that “it takes cash to care”.

Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) last night unveiled its manifesto for the national poll, which Prime Minister P J Patterson will call by year-end and in remarks prepared for the event, the opposition leader underlined that social well-being projects would get priority treatment by a JLP government.

“While there is the need to ensure that there is always cash to care, as we recognise, we must stop postponing the urgency of attending to social needs without making every effort to find the cash to care,” Seaga said in the advanced speech that was made available to the press. “Otherwise, we will continue to perpetuate the separation of one country into two people: the haves and the have-nots.”

Seaga’s ‘cash to care’ reference was being seen last night as an effort to head-off likely criticism of the ability of any government to fund the ambitious catalogue of social programmes — with the urgency he suggests — and the possible throwing back at him that very comment, made in the 1980s, when the People’s National Party accused him of abandoning many of the social programmes that had been put in place by the Michael Manley administration of the 1980s.

In this case, though, Seaga has suggested that there will be robust job creation and economic growth to help finance the projects, and his administration will also get international economic support to fund the resuscitated Social Well Being Programme, which he claimed was largely shelved when the JLP left office in 1989.

Seaga described the document he left behind as “the most comprehensive social programme ever prepared in Jamaica” and said it was fully financed by international donors at the pledging conference in Kingston in 1988.

The JLP, in the new version would have as its primary concern:

* education reform;

* health care delivery;

* housing accommodation;

* water for all; and

* welfare for the most vulnerable.

The aim, said Seaga in his prepared speech, was to deal with what he entered politics 43 years ago to do: to lift the “condition of the have-nots so that there would be one Jamaica of first class citizens only”.

But over the past 40 years, the goal had gone to and fro and Jamaica was hardly better off than at Independence in 1962.

He said: “At this point in my life, I do not intend to leave behind me a legacy that shows little forward movement in creating a decent quality of life for the have-nots. I am a man in a hurry. I cannot wait any longer.”

Seaga also appeared to have jettisoned the economic thinking on development that underpinned his administration of the 1980s when the ‘trickle-down’ concept was in vogue and seen to be in concert with the capitalist ideology espoused by the JLP, as against the PNP’s democratic socialist philosophy.

Said Seaga’s written speech: “We are breaking new ground in development strategy in the policies and programmes in this manifesto. We should all know now that development does not effectively dribble down. Real development to bring a decent quality of life must start from the bottom up.”

If Jamaica was successful in laying the proper foundation, the society as a whole would benefit and there would be the kind of Jamaica of which he has dreamt for 40 years, Seaga said.

He added: “I may never see this vision completely fulfilled, but I want to set this grand design in motion with all the safeguards which I set out in the preface of the manifesto to ensure that there is no more turning back.”

Cost sharing goes in 2005 Reduction starts next year

PRIME Minister P J Patterson announced last night his Government has frozen secondary school fees at last year’s levels and will completely phase them out by 2005. The reduction is to start next year.

The prime minister, at a ruling People’s National Party (PNP) rally in Montego Bay, also announced that the Government will pick up the cost for Jamaican students doing English, Math, Information Technology and one science subject in the Caribbean Examination Council’s (CXC) exams.

However, it was not immediately clear whether the promise to pay exam fees also covers the advanced CAPE exams, in addition to Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate tests written by tens of thousands of Jamaican students annually. Neither was it clear whether the fees will be paid for a single year only.

About 50,000 Jamaicans would have done CXC secondary certificate tests this year, with an average of about five subjects per student. It costs nearly $1,000, on average, to register for a subject.

Last night’s announcements were the Government’s first substantial response to the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) promise, if it wins the coming general elections, to remove the cost-sharing, under which parents pay about 20 per cent of the tuition cost for their children’s high school education.

“What we are doing, in accordance with our plans is, first of all … freezing the cost-sharing exercise at the present levels, where they stand, in September 2002,” Patterson told thousands of party supporters at a rally at Sam Sharpe Square in Montego Bay.

“Commencing next year, when we have been able to provide universal access to secondary education, we are going to begin a reduction of the cost-sharing element in each of the secondary schools so that no later than the year 2005, cost-sharing in secondary schools will be a thing of the past,” the prime minister added. “We’ll be able to have, not only universal access to education, but we’ll be able to have quality education accessible to all.”

Patterson also reiterated the policy that no child should be turned away from school because his/her parents could not afford the fees.

The prime minister also stressed the importance of English Language, Math, Information Technology and the sciences to modern economies and national development and said his Government wanted to encourage Jamaicans to pursue and master these subjects.

“As a consequence of that, all those who are sitting CXC exams this year, the Government is going to be paying the money for English, the money for Mathematics, the money for one science subject and the money for Information Technology,” the prime minister said.