Her name is Corine Smith. She is a single parent and two of her five children still live with her. She works with a sub-contractor at Red Stripe, but only for two or three days per week. That gives her $3,000 — not enough to give her 16-year-old daughter lunch money for five days and buy food and toiletries for the house.

“She go school irregular, all three day a week or two, ’cause mi cyaan afford fi sen her,” says the woman, tears welling in her eyes. “Her grades poor,” adds Smith, her voice breaking. “Teacher seh she would do better if she did go school more often, but mi cyaan afford it. An den ah night time ah bere gunshot, yuh cyaan even go yuh bed. An’ yuh cyaan go work fi earn di money, it just stressing,” she says, tears now streaming down her face.

And as Smith sees it, things are about to get a lot worse. Smith, who lives in the community of Majesty Gardens in the Three Miles area of Spanish Town Road, says the new tax package to take effect January 1, 2010 will be difficult to shoulder.

Last Thursday, Finance Minister Audley Shaw announced a range of taxes he said would bring in $21.8 billion in revenue to the Government. Among them is a jump in GCT from 16.5 per cent to 17.5 per cent and a removal of the tax exemption from most basic food items such as cooking oil, salt and bread.

“Mi nuh have no adjective fi describe it. Ah taxpayer money run di country, but if people not working how come you taxing dem? Yuh can tax people who not working?” asks Smith.

“What happen to job creation? Where are all the jobs they promised?” she asks.

Her own job, which offers no health or pension benefits, used to be full-time, but she says things changed for the worst when the Government changed in 2007.

“Mi haffi call dat hustling ’cause wi nuh get no benefit,” she says. “Wi nuh have no health or pension benefits an’ wi live from pay cheque to pay cheque. It used to be five, all seven days a week, but from Government change, a pure one or two day.

“Mi ah 50, an’ ah di worse mi ever see tings. It worse than the 70s and 80s. Mi nuh care weh it stem from, whether is politics or the recession, ah di worse mi ever see it from mi tek up di care of the world pon mi shoulder,” she adds.

Patricia Hill and Jessica Campbell also live in Majesty Gardens, also called ‘Back-To’. They hold slightly divergent views of the new tax measures.

“Dat ah wickedness fi di poor. Wi coulda get rice fi $20 (per lb) before, now ah $50 an’ it ah go raise again. Wha wi ah go eat now?

“All pampers. Look how long wi come out ah nappy [cloth diapers] stage, wi fi go back to it now?” asks Hill.

“We ah go have less food and less money come next year but we haffi survive,” says Campbell. Every two weeks, she spends $5,000 on grocery items for herself and her three children and limits herself to tinned products.

“We jus’ haffi gwaan live wid it. We haffi fight it, we cyaan give up,” she says.

Majesty Gardens is one of Kingston’s poorest communities, according to the Planning Institute of Jamaica. There, for the most part, people live in makeshift wooden structures with zinc roofs and fences and use the gully to relieve themselves and dispose of waste. Electrical wires form multiple cobwebs overhead, most people are either unemployed or self-styled hustlers who get by on illegal ventures or odd jobs, and tensions between the top and bottom halves of the community leave people holed up or locked out in fear.

In terms of its infrastructure, housing stock and unemployment levels, Majesty Gardens is not unlike other inner-city communities in the capital, particularly Callaloo Bed and Riverton Mews, but the list of depressed communities also includes Denham Town, Payne Land and Rema, to name a few.

Terrence Beines, who operates a grocery shop in Denham Town, agrees with Campbell insofar as having a positive attitude.

“Sales must drop, but wi haffi gwaan fight it. Mi cyaan give up, mi cyaan lock up,” he says. “From yuh borrow the money, yuh have to pay it back, so wi haffi just prepare for it.”

Maxine Francis, who sells cooked food on Regent Street in the community, also expects her client base to dwindle.

“Ah likkle cheap food mi sell an’ if tings raise mi haffi raise my price too, an’ everybody done ah bawl already. Mi understand seh is a world crisis ting, but dem shouldn’t tax di basic tings dem.”

In Callaloo Mews, residents loudly criticised the Government’s move to impose new taxes and increase existing ones.

“Three tax inna one year? I wish everybody who vote fi him [Prime Minister Bruce Golding] woulda suffa, but ah tru both PNP and JLP ah feel it. Dog nyam wi suppa,” says Karen Francis.

“Di Government need fi do supp’m betta than dis enuh. Yuh tax cigarette, yuh tax salt, yuh tax cheese trix? Afta yuh just done put tax pon wi weh day?” asks Everald Lobban who stops at Francis’ bar to buy rum.

“I’m just glad my children are grown,” says 68-year-old resident of Riverton Mews, Edith Fowler. “When you have young children, anywhere yuh have to get it from you have to get it, but when you don’t have children you can do without.”

“Is like the country ah go back to the time when dem used to marry flour and Stayfree,” adds Duhaney Park resident Andy Hasphaul, who is too young to remember that time in the 80s himself, but who says he was told by older folk.