The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

ENGLERSTON MP Glenys Hanna Martin yesterday chastised the government for scrapping a $5m welfare reform project “without just cause”, calling it proof the government is more committed to “gimmicks” and “politically sexy” interventions than alleviating human suffering.

Mrs Hanna Martin, the shadow minister for social services, said the Minnis administration’s decision to halt the Social Safety Net Reform initiative was a “brutal” one to make, as she said such an “ad hoc” decision does nothing to address “the serious and complex issue of poverty” in the country.

Noting that the “politic rhetoric” spewed by the government on the issue “falls short of performance”, Mrs Hanna Martin asserted that “serious policy initiatives should not be lightly uprooted” when there is no plan to replace them.

Meanwhile, former Social Services Minister Melanie Griffin said the government’s decision, as outlined in a recent Inter-American Development (IDB) report, is a “very telling story” of an administration that “continues to put the needs of the most vulnerable persons in our country on the back burner”.

The remarks by both former ministers came days after an IDB report on efforts to reform the Bahamas’ social safety net, which it helped to finance, revealed that the already-launched initiative was “cancelled after the change in policy direction” that followed the May 2017 general election.

The document, which has been obtained by The Tribune, revealed that $5.374m in IDB financing had been spent by the time the project was stopped. That means poverty-stricken families and the Bahamian taxpayer have received almost no value from the investment.

It also represents monies taxpayers will now have to repay despite not gaining the intended benefits from them.

The decision to halt the Social Safety Net Reform initiative was taken under former Social Services and Urban Development Minister Lanisha Rolle, who is now minister of youth, sports and culture. A previous IDB report, revealed by Tribune Business last year, was also highly critical of the effort in finding that it achieved “none of the planned outcomes” with just 27 percent of the targeted 12,000 Bahamian households receiving cash grants.

However, the more-detailed and recent “project completion report” provides a different take, arguing that the minimal achievements had more to do with the project being halted mid-stream while also identifying the typical bureaucratic weaknesses in the Bahamian government.

“The project was cancelled after the change in policy direction based on the change in the political administration after the elections in May 2017,” the IDB report said. “Using social safety nets as a means of affecting these outcomes is no longer seen as a viable option for affecting these indicators.

“After the change in government, the programme was assessed and found not to be in line with the current policy direction, which is why most of the outcomes, which depended on the government delivering transfers under the new rule, were not achieved.”

Some $9.6m worth of funding had initially been dedicated to alleviating poverty and welfare dependency, with $7.5m to come from the IDB and the balance from the government. While the project was halted before the final $4.386m was disbursed, some $5.374 had already been used.

During a press conference on the issue at the Progressive Liberal Party’s headquarters yesterday, Mrs Hanna Martin explained that the programme was premised “upon the fundamental principle of education as a means of escaping poverty” and recognising that despite universal access to education, more than half of the country’s children “are not meeting the graduation standard”.

Mrs Hanna Martin admitted that while the project was met with “some administrative difficulty”, primarily due to “the internal constraints and procedures inherent in the public service bureaucracy”, which to some degree affected coordination between the Ministries of Health, Education and Social Services, they were issues “that could have easily been addressed and corrected.”

However, she said the government abandoned the project “at great cost to the Bahamian people, in excess of $5m, without just cause”, and “with no discernible plan in its stead to combat these serious issues which were disclosed in that report affecting our children in abject poverty conditions.”

She added that such a decision, coupled with the national budget and other policy approaches, shows a “greater commitment to ministerial travel than seriously alleviating human suffering” on the government’s part.

“We know that this is an administration more committed to gimmicks and ad hoc approaches and interventions that they believe are politically sexy, than a genuine and sustained commitment to addressing the serious and complex issue of poverty and its immense human suffering and negative outcomes,” she said.

“The politic rhetoric which infuses our national atmosphere falls short of performance. And as a consequence, our precious children suffer. Serious policy initiatives should not be lightly uprooted, especially when there is no plan to replace it, and especially when we’re talking about our children.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Griffin noted that after two years of “stonewalling and outright falsehoods”, the “truth has finally been revealed about the termination in the project”.

She asserted that Mrs Rolle previously said the project was terminated by the bank, an assertion that was seconded by Health Minister Duane Sands. Mrs Griffin further noted that when asked repeatedly about the continuation of the programme, the response from the relevant minister was that it was full of problems and thus terminated by the IDB.

“The minister’s defence was incredible, we now know, it was also untrue,” she said, adding: “I do not believe the effort was ever made to understand the programme and its value to the country.”

Mrs Griffin added that the programme, dubbed the RISE (Renewing, Inspiring, Sustaining, Empowering) project, was not a “willy-nilly, hurried approach” to what had become a “critical life-long existence for so many of our people on welfare”, but rather a “well-studied approach” to providing not just food to persons in poverty, but also “hope, education and a healthy way of life”.

“RISE spoke directly to the heart of our people with a life changing message that they could take control of their lives and the future of their families,” she said. “More importantly, RISE had an exit plan to break the cycle of poverty on poor families. It was a message of hope and it was doable.”