Who really pays?

Cost of living in Grenada is higher than Amy Winehouse in St Lucia, crawling on the floor searching for alcohol, crack and Blake. Quite frankly, I do not know how people manage.

Transportation has skyrocketed. A one hour trip from my tiny village to the town of St. George’s in a cramped minibus stuffed between the fat legs of and a bucket of fresh jacks, costs upwards one pound sterling. Taxis are rare and their prices are unfixed and often vary based on whether or not clipped English or mellifluous Grenadian pours out of the speaker’s mouth. Grocery stores selling American products are inflated to almost combustion point. Tropicana Juice for instance retails for $24 EC (6 pounds sterling). Basic items like  dental floss can cost upwards $9 EC ($3US). I weep at the price of bog standard French wine, comforted sometimes by the fact that Californian Zinfandel is okay and tastes a little bit like Sauvignon Blanc. Accommodation costs are eye-watering. A hotel that would only just lick at the edges of two or three star status in Europe sells for $90US a night, with maids who moan about guests returning about second helpings of limp bacon (the cheek!) and whose lips are constantly stretched into the perpetual fiasque of kiss-teeth. These days, lunch at a fairly nondescript restaurant no longer comes with added rice, macaroni pie or potatoes as inclusive, dishes have now moved to a pay as you go model, making the average price of lunch near $20 EC.

Yet still, nubile young bodies are berobed in the latest maxidresses, with shoes, purse, beads and earrings to match, attending the latest entertainment incarnation of bingo, Fish Friday, FoodFest, dance or fete, without complaint. Japanese cars saturate narrow roads to bursting point. Hundreds of tumblers clink in rumshops every day, every hour, every minute. Local food joints burst at the seams, keeping up with orders of fried fish, stewed chicken and rice and peas, at an astonishing rate. I often wonder, where oh where does the money come from?

This is why I was glad to take a look at the recently released List of Persons in Grenada hired by the Government and their salaries (something which was kept under lock and key by the last administration). In most developed countries, the salaries of public servants are often published as public, but in small island states like Grenada, where patronage and politicisation of appointments play some part, it is interesting to see the value we accord to certain services on the island. This list is not representative, especially as a vast majority of workers are hired by the Public Service Commission whose archaic salaries and even more archaic rules seem like a particularly bad joke, especially when compared to the modernised and seemingly index linked salaries I noted.

I was shocked that quite a few people are not being paid a living wage. Caretakers of public bathrooms (do they exist in Grenada still?) are being paid $43 dollars a day, just over $800 a month. Many people are earning just over $800- $1000 a month, included a vast number of clerical workers, who made $1380 per month. It is hard to believe that as a teacher in Grenada, I did not earn much more than this and managed to save some of it. How did I do it? How can transportation costs and food be provided for within this small sum is now beyond my comprehension. If one has to pay for rent, how is this sum a fair living wage? Especially when compared against the against the $5000-$8000 salaries of senior policy advisors?
There were notable exceptions however. A driver/security officer in the Ministry of Trade was paid $2000 EC a month, almost $700 more than a Human Resource Officer and an Outreach Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture. A glaring anomaly. Nothing has changed. Like the riddling of the lists with individuals and relatives and friends of the ruling party in the administration before, the list is littered with individuals who constitute the noblesse oblige of the ruling party. The son of a Consultant to the Prime Minister. The daughter of a friend of a Trade Advisor.

The big cash, however, lies in Ambassadorial positions. A basic $59,000 p.a. salary seems minuscule when taking into account an uplift of $102,000, entertainment of $6,000, and a housing allowance of $69,000. This can also include a clothing allowance of up to $1,500. Lawyers are not doing too shabbily either. Average salaries range from $5,000 EC with an uplift to stay within the public service instead of going into private practice of up to $3,500 per month. Inducements of up to $3,000 a month and travel can also be claimed. Plus one gets to live near a beach, in good weather, every day, paying minimal taxes. It is good to know that life can be negotiated to be sweet. What is not so amusing are the starting salaries for junior doctors. After almost 7 years of training, the salary starts at a meagre $3500 with inducements of up to $1500. Comparing the time invested, and the hours worked, I am not sure that this is fair. Especially when considering that salaries of up to three times more in teaching, nursing and the professions are paid by countries such as Trinidad & Tobago and St. Maarten.

I suspect that some of the low salaries are without doubt, the result of the bloated list of workers that fill its pages. Some Ministries have over 20 Technical Workers. Doing what? I have witnessed, with my very own eyes, individuals in the Botanical Gardens pulling out crochet needles during working hours. The government has become the paterfamilias in a system that rewards wastage and does not place a premium on performance, even at the highest levels. It is true that some workers take the proverbial piss; their lunch hour is sacrosanct and dare not be messed with (get off it lazdies and come to the real world where you grab a sandwich in 10 minutes) and the needs of customers are sometimes met with confusing indignance. The remedy however, is not employing a battalion of workers on low wages that are not sufficient to cover the cost of having an average life. The answer is promoting entrepreneurship and having the civil service only employ the best.

It has been reported that the Caribbean Diaspora provides a very useful safety net to cushion the blow. Their remittances of cash and food and household items go a long way towards improvement of life of Caribbean people- this is indeed admirable. However, the fact that there is some indirect welfare based on the bounty of relatives almost seems to obviate the will of government to make any lasting changes to the appointments system, and to modernise the wage structure of island states. This causes the prospect of lasting reform to fester and die.

Meanwhile, we continue to live in a land where the have- nots suffer the indignity of wages that do not allow them to break the cycle of dependency, where the job packages of senior officials are swollen by travel and inducements, where a weird system of contracts (of which I may be the beneficiary in future, let me not knock it too hard) exists alongside a dysfunctional public service, and where results-based packages are not used to incentivise senior policy workers. In other places, there would be mutiny or a strike, or some sense of uneasiness. But this, after all is, Grenada. We amble along, dress up, we do not complain. It is how it is.

(Photo from farm1.flickr- all rights reserved).