Dear Editor,
Just to put some perspective on Dr Frank Anthony’s budget speech, particularly in the areas of Youth and Culture. The Minister spoke about consultations ongoing to establish a National Youth Policy. He declined to mention that this is the third externally funded ‘effort’ to establish a NYP under his tenure. The first is the IDB-funded, Young American Business Trust (YABT)-executed initiative of 2007; the second is the UNDP Enhancing Public Trust, Security and Inclusion (EPTSI) project of 2008-2009. The Introduction to the current draft of a NYP document coming out of the most recent set of consultations has this to say about the latter:
“Key goals of that project included the empowerment of youth and the development of updated youth policy. The policy was however not completed.”
This current attempt is being funded by the Commonwealth Youth Programme, and while the policy was scheduled to be completed last year, there was still a ‘consultation’ in February of 2014. Typical of the PPP’s view of how consultation works, the event was not advertised.
Also not advertised was the ‘consultation’ on cultural industries that Dr Anthony spoke about. Although not on the official invitation list, I turned up and participated, as I did with the youth ‘consultation.’ Notably missing from the official invitation list of that event was Barrington Braithwaite, the one person that has been consistently calling for a policy on creative industries. There remains no National Cultural Policy, of which a Creative Industries Policy would simply be one component, despite there being a draft in Dr Anthony’s possession since 2008.
What we have had is a sloth on key initiatives and the recycling of projects with all the subsequent waste of both donor and taxpayer resources. Three sets of consultations and wasted millions of dollars, wasted energies of the young people who took their precious time to participate and there is nothing to show for it. One hundred million dollars wasted every year on a Sports and Culture ‘Development’ Fund, and as basic a thing as a National Cultural Policy cannot be crafted and put in place. Judging on Minister Anthony’s embarrassing record, another seven years will easily pass under his tenure and we will be in the same position with regard to a National Youth Policy and a National Cultural Policy.
I am still waiting on his response to my last letter on the issues regarding the Caribbean Press – he has been silent, as has Reverend Gideon Cecil, to whom I put the same questions in person when I saw him a few weeks ago. The Minister’s recent World Poetry Day event, poorly advertised, featured poetry readings by carefully selected local poets, yet still absent were the books of local poetry that are in fact in the country and which he promised to launch “soon” about a month ago. Now, I fully expect that in a few months the mysteriously vanished Caribbean Press Executive Editor Dr David Dabydeen will miraculously reappear to launch a few local children’s books to distract from the utter failures of the Press, and I congratulate the handful of also carefully selected local writers that will benefit, but the Minister still has to answer for serious issues of accountability with regard to the Press’ management, something for which he clearly believes he can escape responsibility.
Finally, on the theme of waste of effort and recycling of projects, it is with no small amount of amusement that I saw the Minister speak in his budget presentation about investing in film. He might want to explain what happened to Jagdeo’s 2010-2011 CineGuyana initiative, now an NGO run by Dr Paloma Mohammed. Dr Mohammed has perhaps understandably, in light of her employment with government, been silent on the government’s failure to invest in a film production environment, but the fact is that no public money has gone into CineGuyana since that first funding. Dr Anthony might wish to explain how he spent the $9.25 million he allocated last year for Film Production under the Sports and Arts Development Fund, some of which had to have been spent since his revised budgetary estimates for 2013 shows that he spent $94 million of the $100 million. Also, he might wish to explain how he is setting up a film school in the absence of adequate copyright protections, as well as a national film production policy (as has existed for a few years in Trinidad), or a National Cultural Policy.
The level of incompetence that Dr Anthony has shown in public office in every aspect of his portfolio would be embarrassing to any other democratically government outside of the PPP. What makes it worse is the unapologetic arrogance that accompanies that incompetence, typical of the PPP’s view of public accountability, and this is simply not good enough.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
