I wrote an article a few weeks back that spoke to generational poverty and its relationship with a corrupted Emancipation proclamation, and a cut-and-run Independence affair.

Since then, I have received e-mail speaking to ‘what is a tangible plan to end generational poverty’.

Well, generally speaking, they are specific characteristics to the victims of generational poverty. The first one is, obviously, that they are very poor. Not just poor, but pauper poor. There are levels in poverty. By extension, there are levels of poor.

If you live in an inner-city community like Greenwich Town you would be considered by the rest of Jamaica to be poor. This is simply not so. There are homes in Greenwich Town that function at middle class levels. Then by extension, there are homes with occupants living in abject poverty.

If you live in a squatter settlement there may be one or two persons who would not be described as impoverished, but the large majority are desperately poor. So the second characteristic is that you likely live on captured land.

The term generational makes it clear that your parents and grandparents were poor and subsequently, you are too. So that is characteristic three.

Then, of course, the education level of the pauper is at best functionally literate. So that level of limited education is characteristic four.

So, how do you elevate so many hundreds of thousands of people out of generational poverty?

Well, you remember characteristic one is that you are poor and characteristic two is you live on captured land. So the first step, the first dramatic step, is to give people titles for their land.

A recent study by social scientist Alexander Causewell for the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) entitled ‘Ground work for peace: re-orientating ZOSO for sustained violence reduction’, demonstrated the impact of giving people titles for their land in respect of economic improvement and crime.

I didn’t agree with all aspects of the study, but I do agree that by giving them titles it makes them no longer paupers because they now own something that is tangible. I know what I am going to hear: that I am encouraging squatting. Let me explain before you throw the eggs.

If you have been on a piece of Crown land for generations, then it’s likely your great grandfather should have been given it. So instead, he took it. If the issue is private lands, I am far less liberal.

However, there has to be the consideration that land such as Windsor Heights in St Catherine will never be cleared of informal settlers. You may as well just give the occupants a title for the land they have occupied for generations. There is literally no chance of you ever going to get use of land in geographies like that, irrespective of whether it is government or private land.

This would be a relatively low-cost initiative by the Government, as they would be giving up virtually nothing. So once you have covered the issue of being in possession, let’s look long-term at fixing the other characteristics that are endemic in generational poverty. Let’s tackle the education issue.

This requires Government intervention examining a perspective of changing lives not over a short term, but over a generation. So simply put, not before the next election.

There are politicians who already think like this. I once had a conversation with two politicians in separate fora from both sides of the political divide. They both said something that needed to be said, and they both reflected a long-term vision.

One was Fitz Jackson, who said to me: “I look 30 years down the line for an improved Jamaica for although I won’t be around, Jamaica will be around.”

Similarly, another great thinker, Bobby Montague, like Fitz Jackson, stated: “I have grown up in rural poor with board floors on board house. I want a Jamaica where there is no poor, even if that should occur after my lifetime.”

Both great men are thinkers who realise the benefits of thinking not only of the generation that is here now, but also the generations to come.

Regular readers of my column know that I am not a fan of the two-party political system and hope to one day see a coalition government where we get the best of both sides of the political divide. That being said, we have to ensure that the next generation is enriched with education.

This starts by requiring as little participation as possible by the current generation who is so poor that they are used to it. This is going to be costly. There, however, is literally no other way. Education has value.

It’s hard for you to understand unless you don’t even have the basic requirement to flip burgers. Or if you just can’t read and write. The barriers to progress are compounded ten-fold if you simply are qualified to do nothing.

The Jamaican Government — political party after political party — has put education as a priority. It is free! Post-secondary training is also free at HEART.

I honestly don’t think that many of us truly understand the reality of people living in inner-city ghettos, squatter settlements, gully bank communities, or even extreme rural poverty.

Telling those parents to send their children to school every day, on time, properly dressed, properly fed and with a plan to eat, reach school and return home is simply not going to happen. It is commendable that money is given to them through Government programmes to assist. Have you ever thought how difficult that is to regulate?

The mammoth task of minimising what we need from parents is the direction we need to be going in. Then comes a programme to provide the required infrastructure in the settlements that raise the standard of living of the newly titled residents.

I have seen Jamaican governments solve the problem of a transport system in Kingston and St Andrew, and St Catherine. This may seem to be no big deal to those of you under 50. Well, let me introduce you to those of us over 50 who experienced the Jamaica Omnibus Service, where we waited for buses for an average of four hours with a hope of getting a kotch on a step.

We were then handed over to private enterprise who treated us like animals, whilst they behaved like animals.

“No schoolas” is a term I remember most from my high school days. That along with being physically shoved off buses on a daily basis because they didn’t want to carry schoolchildren.

That our Government can solve that transport crisis means they can solve the challenge of introducing and installing infrastructure into informal settlements. It actually took the effort of quite a few governments to solve the metropolitan transport crisis.

Everybody in a post-Independent Jamaica needs to have access to clean running water, electricity, and sewage systems. Poverty has a direct relationship to the environment in which you live. If people are forced to dispose of their waste in an uncivilised manner, then it creates a similar type of thinking that traps you into generational poverty.

So in closing, we deal with the land tenure, the education issue and the infrastructure issue.

This will take another generation, maybe two, to end generational poverty. So many of you reading this article, and the writer himself, will not live to see the end of poverty in Jamaica, but we will see a path laid out with an intention to end it.

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