WHAT HAS T&T DONE IN UN’S DECADE OF AFRICAN PEOPLE?

WHAT has the Government of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley done in honour of the United Nations’ International Decade of People of African Descent?

The decade, which ends next year, is aimed at providing recognition, justice and development for people of African descent.

Some 400 million African-descended people of the Americas – which include Trinidad and Tobago – were to be specially recognised, promoted and protected, according to the United Nations.

The Rowley administration, which came into office in the first year of the UN-proclaimed decade, is not known to have fulfilled any of the UN goals.

It would have been great to be a fly on the wall when the Prime Minister conferred privately with the visiting Otumfuo Osei Tutu 11, King of the Ashanti Kingdom in Ghana.

King Tutu 11, who has been described as “arguably the most revered and popular monarch in Ghana,” may have asked Rowley about measures in T&T to meet the UN mandate.

Well-regarded playwright and civic activist Pearl Eintou Springer said last week that even amid the proclaimed decade, not much has been done to recognise Africans in T&T.

Aiyegoro Ome, who headed the Reparations Committee, has protested that Rowley’s Government “still ignores” the announced decade.

When the Prime Minister was quizzed in Parliament a couple of months ago by Opposition Member of Parliament Rodney Charles, he appeared ignorant about the state of the Reparations Committee.

“As far as I know,” he said flippantly, “the Government appointed a Reparations Committee.”

Ome said: “This is not the first time the Prime Minister has been dismissive of the Reparations Committee.”

As in other post-chattel slavery societies, the committee was meant to advocate for compensation and other forms of support.

Some descendants of former slaves in the Caribbean have recently received various types of assistance from British-based relatives of ex-slave owners.

Momentum is growing for further financial support.

That has not taken place in T&T, and there is no functioning Reparations Committee to press the case.

The Rowley Administration never speaks about the matter.

In fact, Ome has told of difficulties in securing an audience with a Government official to discuss the subject.

He said earlier this year: “By such disregard, the current African elite and their associates in the PNM have conveniently allowed their own base to have others ‘pass their mouth’ on them…”

Professor Selwyn Cudjoe, who headed the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP), has been similarly critical.

Cudjoe wrote that “PNM leaders do not understand that in spite of the progress the country has made since its independence, Black people … are still at the bottom of the economic pile.”

In a 2020 article, he groused about “the few Black people in the Cabinet and the inconsequential portfolios they hold.”

He complained about how the PNM “treats its Black members, the poverty among Black people, and the deteriorating conditions in which we live.”

The PNM has “failed Black people,” he said in 2021, and they are “sinking lower and lower.”

“The PNM is not responding to the interests of their major constituents,” Cudjoe told an interviewer.

He stated that Blacks do not receive contracts and top jobs.

“We are sinking; I don’t see any way out.”

 Indeed, the gap between the rich and poor has widened in recent years, with the working class, made up primarily of Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians and Tobagonians, struggling to make ends meet.

Commercial banks and large business corporations, whose shareholders are typically upper-class citizens, have enjoyed increased profits.

Expanding large enterprises and the Covid-19 shutdown have led to many small businesses closing up shop.

Some argue that the condition of the working Black masses has not improved since the 1970 Black Power revolution, which was aimed at getting a larger piece of the economic pie for the underclass.

Social and economic mobility remains a frontline issue.

On Emancipation Day, the PNM top brass and elites don dashikis and parade their affinity to the Afro-T&T cause.

But have there been any local accomplishments in the UN International Decade of People of African Descent?