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Contact:
John Emmanuel
Thursday, November 10, 2005 - A Country Poverty Assessment exercise
currently underway in Saint Lucia is reportedly providing planners with vital
insights into the social fabric of the island.
Deputy Chairman of the National Assessment Team (NAT) Donavan Williams says
sixteen communities island-wide have been specially selected to be part of the
exercise. The survey touches on four main components namely macro economic
analysis, institutional analysis, survey of living conditions, and participatory
poverty assessment. “It is very interesting and revealing to hear firsthand of
some of the responses from some of the groups that we have interviewed so far,”
says Williams.
He says he was, “privy to a meeting of children ages 8 – 14 in the Faux A-Choux
community and the insights that they provided were quite astounding. You would
not believe that persons of that age can perceive some of the issues, problems
and solutions to those issues. I think it’s a real exciting exercise in that
sense.”
The Saint Lucia initiative is being undertaken simultaneously with
Antigua/Barbuda. The rest of the region will have similar poverty assessments
conducted in their territories next year. Social Transformation Minister
Honourable Menissa Rambally says the data gathered will be used to assess the
quality of life and living conditions being experienced at the community, family
and individual levels, with particular interest on vulnerable groups like women,
and children.
According to Ms. Rambally, “the Ministry of Finance will serve as a beneficiary
of this information and exercise, so will the Ministries of Education and Health
because you can well understand that when you go into a community, the
information that we would glean from that community would be wide ranging.
Therefore this country poverty assessment is not only useful to the social
development landscape of St. Lucia but it’s important to every aspect of
development taking place within the country because it is going to inform us in
a very real way as to what people are experiencing.”
The last country poverty assessment was conducted in 1995 and gave rise to the
formation of the Poverty Reduction Fund among other intervention agencies. This
current assessment will end by January of 2006 with a draft report scheduled for
February 2006. Officials say in the end the hope is to further enhance the types
of programmes that must be undertaken by government in order to make meaningful
interventions.
The main donor agency involved in funding the poverty assessment is the
Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), in close collaboration with the National
Assessment Team (NAT) appointed by the Ministry of Social Transformation,
Culture and Local Government.
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