By: Thinking Citizen
The members of Team Unity advertises in various ways and at various times that
Team Unity Government is working for you which the Team Unity Government
wants to interpret as working for the general public or the ordinary man and
woman on the street.
That is definitely not so. The YOU for what the Team Unity Government is
working comprise the brothers and sisters of Timothy Harris, the family and
friends of Government Ministers, powerful and influential supporters of Team
Unity.
Our Labour Party has no reason to advertise that it is working for you . That is plainly visible by one and all.
Nationals of St. Kitts and Nevis would recall that it was the leaders of the
Labour Party who first raised the issue of Independence for St. Kitts and Nevis
and that it was the opposition PAM Party that fought against the move to
Independence for St. Kitts and Nevis. Of course PAM turned around and changed
its mind and went after Independence like a hungry dog. Do not let anybody fool
you. Just read the Democrat newspaper on the issue.
The leaders of the Labour Party did not have to advertise that the Labour Party
was working for you Everyone knew that. Independence for St. Kitts and Nevis
meant that everyone would be independent and not some independent and others
not.
The St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party raised the issue of Free High School
Education for all children 12 and 12+. When the matter was first raised, PAM
took strong objection to the idea of the children of cane-cutters and field
workers sitting at the same chairs and desks and tables as the children of sugar
estate owners and managers and bank managers. Since PAM could not stop the move
by the Labour Party Government to free-up the Secondary School system, the white
and half white parents took their white and half white children away from the
Grammar School and the Girls High School in St. Kitts and sent them to school in
Barbados and the United Kingdom.
The Labour Government did not have to boast that it was working for you as
that was plainly obvious. That policy measure by the Labour Party Government
benefited all children equally, both the children of the poor. No parent of
children attending the Grammar School and the Girls High School was required to
pay school fees. Attendance was free.
The Hon R.L. Bradshaw observed that there were too many beggars on the streets
of Basseterre especially among those persons who had retired from the Sugar
Factory and the cane fields. Mr. Bradshaw decided to do something positive about
the matter. He got the Labour Government to introduce the first National
Provident Fund and then Social Security Scheme much to the annoyance and
objections of employers in general.
The Labour Party Government did not have to shout that it was working for you
when it instituted the Social Security Scheme as retirees from the sugar estates
and the Sugar Factory did not have to hang around Fort Street and the Circus in
downtown Basseterre to beg passers-by for something to buy food. The Social
Security pension in most cases provided adequate funds to allow retirees to live
out the rest of their lives with dignity and respect.
The then Labour Government introduced the Protection of Employment Act that
worked not for you, the cherished few but for you and you and you, that is the
ordinary man and woman in the street. The Act also put a stop to the practice of
certain PAM employers who fired Labour supporters from their jobs for purely
political reasons.