Ralph Gonsalves characterizes the current state of the country as being enveloped in a \u201cfiscal and economic crisis\u201d that is causing significant suffering and hardship for the population.<\/p>\n
He defines this crisis as a condition where the government is \u201cinnocent of the extent of the condition\u201d and lacks any clear \u201cidea as to the way forward,\u201d choosing instead to focus on scoring political points.<\/p>\n
Regarding social welfare, Gonsalves argues that the current government has significantly reduced support for the vulnerable and politicized the distribution of state resources:<\/p>\n
Reduction in Direct Assistance: He asserts that \u201csocial welfare ain\u2019t helping in the way in which we used to help\u201d. He claims that ordinary citizens\u2014specifically those who are poor, marginalized, or vulnerable\u2014are being denied requests for help across government services.Education and Scholarships: Gonsalves highlights a shift in educational support, noting that individuals seeking to attend teachers\u2019 college are now being told to \u201ctake a loan\u201d rather than receiving the state assistance previously available. He contrasts this with his administration\u2019s record of providing full scholarships for first and master\u2019s degrees, a practice he claims is being \u201creversed\u201d.Politicization of Aid: A major point of his analysis is the transition of welfare and employment functions from state agencies to political constituency offices. He notes that these offices are selectively entertaining limited numbers of people (e.g., the first 50) for assistance, which he views as a move to handle state business as a political enterprise.Employment as Welfare: He critiques the management of \u201croad work\u201d cleaning, which traditionally provides income for families before the school year begins. He claims that instead of being managed by the state agency BRAGSA, the hiring is being done through constituency offices, effectively \u201cselecting them politically\u201d rather than through professional public service channels.<\/p>\n
Gonsalves says that while people are \u201ccatching the N\u201d (experiencing hardship), the government is failing to engage with the external world in an \u201cefficacious manner\u201d to improve the country\u2019s fiscal standing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ralph Gonsalves characterizes the current state of the country as being enveloped in a \u201cfiscal and economic crisis\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-795204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}