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Purely Dominica

Purely Dominica


brain-drain

If education is the key to development in any knowledge-based economy, then why is Dominica losing so much of its human capital? Maybe the choices are so few.

Dominicans are becoming aware of the large flow of our brains down the drain especially during the annual graduation season of students from Dominica’s Secondary schools and the Dominica State College.

Every year during graduation students are given well-meaning advice on the value of an education and the need to build on whatever they have learnt as they continue the journey of life.

But few of these so-called advisers address the fact that only a small percentage of the graduating students every year will enter the job market; a large number will join the unemployed on the street corner and dozen more will go overseas in search of so-called greener pastures.

Statistics shows that the out-ward flow of the country’s best brains has been so steady over the years that it appears that Dominica’s education system has been commissioned to train persons for the job market of the United States, Canada, Antigua, Guadeloupe, St Martin, Tortola, and other countries in the region. The problem is that these emigrants have been educated to secondary and tertiary level in Dominica and are Dominica’s most productive and enterprising workers particularly at their age.

When are we going to realize that knowledge is a wealth-creating asset to our country’s development? I’m literally pleading with government leaders, to please come up with some incentives that will encourage more of educated brains to stay and help develop our small island economy. Not someone else economy.

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Editor’s note: This post was guest blogged by Dan Tanner of dan-ruth-tanner.com

I received the following e-mail, which I have edited only to correct typographical errors, grammar and spelling, from a person whom I have never met and did not know:

Welcome to Dominica!

I would like to bring your attention to a problem that you and your well-intentioned Americans are causing for residents of Dominica and the Caribbean as a whole.

You and your US friends are causing the price of property on the island to escalate to the degree that locals are unable to purchase property on the island. This has happened in several Caribbean countries, most recently St. Kitts and Antigua, and has resulted resentment by the locals as you might well imagine.

We understand that given the exchange rate of the US dollar, Americans with incomes in US dollars can afford lifestyles far beyond the locals. Property that once sold for $300 EC dollars are now being sold for $300US. The average income on the island is $40,000EC. How do you expect locals to afford these prices? Is this fair? How would you feel if the situation was reversed?

Please convey to your friends and colleagues to be mindful of these factors when negotiating the purchase of property in the future.

Some welcome! But I wish to counter the assertions above.

First, I am responsible only for myself, not for other American. And, none of them are “mine” or “my friends”. In fact, I am not responsible for encouraging any other Americans to settle in Dominica. (I do know of some, who have found my Web site. One is a nice African-American lady. I write this because assumptions will be made about me. All I need do is show my face and strangers walk up to me and ask if I want to buy land!)

Second, how would I feel if the situation were reversed? Well, in some respects it is. I know of several Dominicans who came to the USA on tourist visas and have remained here illegally to work. Do I complain that they take jobs away from Americans? No. Do I inform on them to the authorities? No. Rather, I congratulate them on their industriousness and initiative. Moreover, consider this: They save up their pay and ultimately return to Dominica, and guess what – they purchase land often at a high price.

Third, where is the blame? As foreigners, we can’t build and live on land without title. Where is the only place we can turn to obtain such land? If you can’t guess, I’ll tell you: From Dominicans, who have often jacked up the price. Some have set aside tracts to sell as enclaves for foreign buyers. We spurned such land and sought land within a village with close Dominican neighbors.

We bought our small bit of land on a second attempt. On the first, the seller did not have title. When the caveat was published, so many claimants came forward that the low price we might have paid was insufficient to satisfy the greedy demands of those who had never worked or cared for the land as the seller had, and a price that might have satisfied them would have been unaffordable to us.

So, I can turn the writer’s demand to me around: Look to those Dominicans who are out to make a quick killing by selling land to foreigners at inflated prices.

We have and will continue to provide employment to Dominicans, and we don’t farm the small bit of land we bought – it has a floral garden to comfort us in our retirement, that’s all – but rather we purchase fruits and vegetables as well as eggs, poultry and fish from local vendors, and we deal with local tradesmen. We also plan to help by teaching lessons and skills that we have acquired in our lifetimes, as volunteers.

My own parents fled nazi terror and immigrated to America. Now we are older and retired. Were we to try and remain in America we would become dependent elderly poor. We are as victimized by economic forces beyond our control as surely as are any ordinary former working people – Dominicans or others – in the world. For us, Dominica is a haven of rest, peace, and affordability just as surely as the USA is the land of opportunity to Dominicans and others from developing countries.

We are equally victims right here in our town in the US. It was rural when we came here. In the 30 years we’ve lived here its population has tripled, the property taxes are up fivefold, and new houses cost about four times what we’ve managed to sell ours for. In short, we can no longer afford to live in the town that we helped build! And who was it who inflated property prices here? It was the locals with multi-generational roots, who then resented the newcomers’ wealth while they went after their money without shame.

Human nature and economic forces are the same everywhere. So please don’t blame me, another victim. We only want rest and peace and to love our new neighbors.

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bowen couple murder

Editor’s note:This is a guest post from Danielle Edwards – a Literature and History student and an aspiring Journalist.

Weeks after our Caricom leaders’ agreement to market regional destinations as part of a complete ‘One Caribbean’ regional experience instead of individual island territories, we’re faced with the growing challenges of sharing each other’s problems…

In the heat of this summer’s Carnival festivities, the brutal murder of a British couple honeymooning in Antigua has sparked outrage among locals, government officials and foreigners alike.

Only a fortnight after blissfully cutting their wedding cake together, the Mullanys were attacked and shot before sunrise at their secluded luxury cottage in the Cocos Hotel last week. A £66,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of their murderers, and authorities in Antigua & Barbuda are now scrambling to implement ‘extraordinary measures’ and ‘beef up security’ to prevent such incidents from happening again.

Unfortunately, it seems like officials may be trying to play this off as an isolated incident as they are extremely frantic about the country’s tourism image. The Tourism Minister Mr. Harold Lovell has said that ‘This isolated incident has deeply shocked our community and we wish to reassure visitors that Antigua and Barbuda is a safe destination’. This move has not gone unnoticed by the international media. According to a BBC news report, ‘people who live there say…that crime is increasing’.

There have been a whopping 10 murders so far in Antigua for the year in addition to numerous incidents of armed robbery and sexual assault- a big number for a little island. Most of these crimes remain unsolved, but some persons have, unbelievably, found comfort in the fact that the majority of homicides have been committed against locals and not foreigners. However there is no doubt that the crime rate is far too high. In 2006 alone there were 19 killings.

Many Antiguans are upfront about the problem, citing gang war as the underlying menace. There are allegedly more than 10 territorial gangs on the island! In fact, days before the Mullanys were murdered police discovered 100 rounds of .38 ammunition and a gunman’s mask in a local residence.
But while some of us may be inclined to brush this incident off as an Antiguan problem, in reality it has implications for the wider Caribbean. It comes just weeks after our Caricom leaders decided to market the region jointly as part of a ‘One Caribbean’ marketing campaign.

Since, according to Mr. Ralph Gonsalves, ‘We don’t have the resources to be aggressive individually’, our Caribbean nations will no longer be promoted as single islands, but jointly as a regional destination. There will no longer be different places and faces- we will all share one face for the prospective tourist.

While this agreement certainly has potential economic benefits, one of its foreseeable implications is likely to be that the negative impact of crimes such as the Mullanys’ murder on the Antiguan tourism industry would also be shared by other islands such as Dominica and St. Lucia. In other words, one island’s crime would inescapably affect the image of all the islands.

Already, territories like Jamaica, which has one of the highest crime rates in the world, and Trinidad & Tobago are grappling with the suppression of crime at home.

So the question arises- have our leaders prepared themselves adequately for this new tourism strategy? It’s worth wondering whether or not they are all currently aware of the circumstances surrounding this particular crime, which has already prompted several flight cancellations to Antigua, and the fact that its criminal investigations are being impeded by a ‘code of silence’.

We the people know how wonderful life is in the Caribbean, but many tourists can be easily discouraged from visiting the region by atrocious crimes, many of which are never easily solved. And now, our leaders are faced with the challenge of fighting crime all over the Caribbean and not only in their home territories- whether they wish to accept this reality or not.

And they may not be quite ready to deal with this challenge.

Sources: TheSun.co.uk & BBC.co.uk/Caribbean

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