An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotised by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. — Carl Jung

THREE weeks ago Leader of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Andrew Holness, announced that the JLP would remove the burden of auxiliary fees at the secondary level of our education system were it to form the next Government. There has been great weeping and gnashing of teeth by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) since.

The PNP came to power in December 29, 2011 on a platform of undying love for the poor and vulnerable. Portia Simpson Miller promised that her Administration would “balance people’s lives, while balancing the books”.

“The mandate which Jamaicans gave the People’s National Party on December 29 is a call to action. It is a signal from our people that we, the Government, must earn their trust. It also gives us the opportunity to ease the burdens and the pressures of increasing poverty, joblessness, and a deteriorating standard of living.” (excerpt from Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s inauguration speech, January 5, 2012).

Her words now ring hollow, like a political Jacob; even to party automatons.

The removal of auxiliary fees cannot be afforded, is the trump card argument of the PNP. Beneficiaries of “free education” in the 1970s are some the most vociferous opponents. The thinking is symptomatic of slaves who lived in the plantation great house. I am not surprised.

In 2007, the PNP vigorously argued that we could not afford the removal of tuition at the secondary level. The JLP did it. The PNP did not repudiate the policy in 2012.

Four years ago the PNP campaigned against the removal of user fees as a prerequisite to access basic health care. The JLP did it. With an inverted stroke of genius that would have baffled even Einstein, the PNP kept the system but reduced the budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Health.

The supremely sinister among us might say the PNP was trying to destroy a legacy of the JLP and prove they were right all along. If they are right, the PNP’s miscalculation has backfired with catastrophic consequences. To date 19 babies are dead because they were infected with germs at two State-run hospitals. We were warned.

Dr Alfred Dawes, former president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association, told us from as early as May this year that conditions in several of the nation’s hospitals were tantamount to a bullet train at full blast heading for a giant precipice. Dawes has since been exiled on a kind of political Elba. Two months ago another harbinger appeared. This Administration curmudgeonly released a summary of a health audit which it ordered following on the revelations by Dawes.

The findings were devastating. But those in leadership failed to recognise — maybe due to innate incompetence or a ‘don’t care’ attitude — that Humpty Dumpty was no longer sitting on the wall. The International Monetary Fund, some say, in Pontius Pilate move, told us last month that it is not responsible for the sad state of our health services.

The audit reportedly attributes the state of health facilities being consequent to:

1. Inadequate systems and infrastructure for Infection Prevention and Control, in particular for the MOINA areas (Maternity, Operating Theatre, Neonatal Units, Intensive Care and Accident & Emergency)

2. Inadequate hand hygiene practice, promotion and infrastructure throughout

3. Inadequate and inconsistent supply of pharmaceuticals and sundries

4. Inadequate supplies of linen, including drapes, gowns, etc

5. Inadequate numbers and functional medical equipment (various types)

6. Inadequacy in stock management

7. Inadequate and inconsistent documentation of critical needs list

8. Inadequate supplies of PPEs such as plastic aprons used to prevent contact with waste or body fluids

9. Major defects in infrastructure (The Gleaner, September 2, 2015)

The unabridged document at the point of writing this article was still being treated like the Manhattan Project. Inevitably leaks happen. The revelations by Opposition spokesman on finance, Audley Shaw, at a mass rally in May Pen last Sunday proves that you cannot hide that which cannot be hidden, especially in the Information Age.

Why is Jamaica unable to adequately fund health, national security, education, and other crucial services after 53 years of Independence? What some social scientists term “structurally corrupt” governmental systems and practices are at the heart of the problem. Like night follows day, we get the results of mismanagement, governance by cronyism, immersed in what former Prime Minister P J Patterson described as the “politics of scarce benefits and spoils carried on by hostile tribes who seem to be perpetually at war”.

Last week I read a very interesting article, entitled ‘Kenyans are not angry enough to fight corruption’, in The Star, one of, if not the most prominent and credible newspaper in Kenya — not to be confused with a local sensationalist tabloid. The director and chief executive officer of the Kenya School of Law Board Professor PLO Lumumba, a world-renowned scholar, made this poignant observation.

“Corruption, as Kofi Annan once said, is worse than prostitution; prostitution may affect the morals of an individual, but corruption undermines democracy, it undermines peace and security. Corruption affects every sector. It is because of corruption that our roads are not the way they should be, it is because of corruption that our education sector is where it is today, it is because of corruption that agriculture and health sectors are adversely affected. There is nothing as devastating as corruption and our economy is suffering as a result.” (The Kenyan Star, November 2, 2015)

Like Chief Seattle said in his letter to US President Franklin Pierce in 1854, “All things are connected.”

It is not that we do not have the resources to remove the auxiliary fees at the secondary level, as the PNP would want us to believe. The reality is that billions of tax dollars and borrowed funds are being channelled into seemingly bottomless conduits that are concerned only with personal aggrandisement, “curry favour scams”, incestuous bailouts, and barefaced raping of State resources. Economic executioners are killing us. Like Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most famous hangman, they operate with great efficiency.

Degenerates of crony capitalism teach that, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” The tragedy is that, like the uncritical animals in George Orwell’s allegory, Animal Farm, hundreds have been duped into believing that there is a ‘leader and follower cast’. Some, as it were, must forever be “hewers of wood and carriers of water”. The resources exist to afford the removal of ancillary fees at the secondary level, but our priorities have been inverted.

This Administration spent $350 million to extinguish a preventable fire at Riverton dump and to date over $100 million cannot be properly accounted for at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). The prime minister defended the erstwhile CEO of the NSWMA, her close friend and president of the PNP’s Women’s Movement, Jennifer Edwards with the words: “She [Jennifer] did not start the fire.”

Last October, the country found out that near $200 million of National Housing Trust (NHT) funds were used to purchase the Outameni property. This was done to bail out Lennie Little-White. Some board members who presided over this most imprudent decision, inclusive of Lambert Brown, Sonia Hyman, Robert Budhan, and Percival Latouche, were rewarded with reappointment by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. What a country!

These snippets of recent news stories testify to the mismanagement of the NHT’s resources. “The Auditor General is reporting the NHT has failed to realise any return on three major projects in the past five to 10 years that cost taxpayers more than $ 2 billion.” (The Gleaner, April 21, 2015)

“The auditor general has also highlighted a case in which the NHT signed a sales agreement with the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) and the Ministry of Housing to purchase lands at Ironshore for $202.5 million. The NHT later discovered that the valuation submitted by the NHDC was not for the site visited by the Trust in 2005.” (The Gleaner, April 22, 2015)

“Ignoring warnings from its technical committee and even before it did an environmental impact assessment, the board of the National Housing Trust approved the spending of $62.5 million to purchase property in St Mary owned by a company controlled by then senior government minister Dr Paul Robertson.” (The Gleaner, May 3, 2015) Some 70 per cent of those who contribute to the Trust get no housing benefit. The math is obvious.

A World Bank report told us that for every dollar in loans Jamaica borrows, the country gets only 40 cents of value. What are some of the results? Today we have a dollar that is worth less than one US cent. Some 1.1 million Jamaicans live below the poverty line. (The Gleaner, March 26, 2014). Thirty-five per cent of Jamaicans live as squatters. (The Gleaner, July 11, 2012). Our murder rate is in the top five of the world. Since the start of the year 1,037 Jamaicans have been slaughtered.

Jamaica has a higher income inequality than Haiti and every other country in this hemisphere, except Suriname (The Gleaner, December 4, 2014). Our institutions are ranked below some dubious states by the 2015-2016 Global Competitiveness Report. On February 2, 2002, a story in The Gleaner told us that $ 6.4 billion of public funds was wasted in major money scandals between 1989 and 1998. Do you see why there is the millstone of auxiliary fees around the necks of already overburdened parents?

Remove just 15 per cent of the waste, mismanagement and corrupt use of public resources and we could adequately fund national security, health and education. This process must start by removing those who have an interest in maintaining the current debilitating system of ‘milk drinking’ [public corruption] and the implementation of systems that are sufficient deterrents to those who are biting at the bits to feed at the political trough.

Reports from the Auditor and Contractor Generals over the last 25 years show evidence of waste of public funds amounting to [estimate] $27 billion dollars. Do you see the connection?

Last Monday this newspaper’s front page screamed ‘$1b more for JEEP’. “The Government is spending close to $1 billion across 63 constituencies under Phase 5 of the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP). During this phase, the 63 Members of Parliament (MP) will have access to $10 million per constituency, while parish and Kingston and St Andrew Corporation councillors will get a total of $70 million. The National Works Agency (NWA), in a submission to the House of Representatives’ Public Administration and Appropriations Committee recently, said that so far, of 67 contracts to be executed across the 63 constituencies, 66 contracts for 62 of the constituencies have been prepared, and 51 contracts have already started to take effect in 48 constituencies.” (Jamaica Observer, November 2, 2015)

Winning elections is not just a priority for this Administration, it seems the only priority. These results from our education system make me think we are creating a conveyor belt of permanent JEEP-type dependents?

“Some 34 per cent of age-level high school students were not recommended to do CSEC examinations last year. The grade 11 cohort averages 40,000 young people per year. Data provided by the Ministry of Education indicate that only 38.8 per cent of the grade 11 cohort who sat CSEC in 2014 attained five subjects, including mathematics and English.” (The Gleaner, August 31, 2015)

The article commented inter alia: “The National Youth Policy 2015-2030 Green Paper, which was recently tabled in the House of Representatives by youth minister Lisa Hanna, noted that for the five years 2010-2014, an average of 17 per cent of students in the grade 11 cohort passed five CSEC subjects, including mathematics and English. The data imply that almost two-thirds of the cohort failed to gain sufficient qualifications to move on to any post-secondary academic institutions, which compromises their ability to obtain sustainable employment.”

Is it any surprise that 40 per cent of our youth are jobless? It is not a surprise that the economy is growing at the speed of a snail moving over marmalade. We have been warned by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that we need to put our people to work. “IMF says Jamaica needs to create more jobs.” (The Gleaner, September 25, 2015)

We have a multi-billion-dollar transport company whose chief managers have their substantive qualifications in pastoral studies and public relations. The results are not rocket science. “The Jamaica Urban Transit Company has suffered almost five times the amount of losses it projected since the start of the new financial year, according to the most up-to-date financials that were discussed at Wednesday’s sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament.” (Jamaica Observer, October 23, 2015) A loss of $ 560 million is not “chicken feed” in a country which the U.. Department of Agriculture projects to be “the worst performer out of 189 countries in terms of growing its economy over the next 15 years.” (April 13, 2015)

Public resources are ‘managed’ as if we have oil, diamond and gold reserves. “More than $665 million, or 21 per cent of members’ deposits, could not be accounted for by the National People’s Co-operation Bank, and lending from this portfolio had reached the stipulated 50 per cent limit.” (The Gleaner, September 17, 2015)

According to an article in this newspaper entitled: ‘Audit uncovers financial irregularities at State-owned housing body’, said: “Among the findings being questioned by the draft report from one of the audits, a copy of which was obtained by the Jamaica Observer, are the overpayment of close to $100 million in motor vehicle upkeep by one senior employee of the HAJ for a vehicle that was “ineligible” for the allowance. The report also outlined that several senior managers are receiving travelling allowances, although their vehicle documents are expired. In another instance detailed in the report, a number of managers were paid gratuities of up to $2.1 million before completing their employment contracts.” (Jamaica Observer, October 22, 2015) We are in an almighty pickle.

Some of those holding public office who are vehemently against the removal of auxiliary fees at the secondary level send their children to overseas universities, while they preside over the wanton waste of public funds, a practice that makes it near impossible for children of the masses to get an increased fighting chance at basic education.

We have got better and better at the wrong things. While too many sit idly by — stunted by inaction — the past is becoming the present and rapidly replicating into the future. Impotent rage will not help. Jamaica needs a new governance and management architecture.

Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific. — Zig Ziglar

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.