Black Immigrant Daily News

El Center for Popular Democracy y Hedge Clippers publicaron el miércoles el informe “La promesa fallida de las farmacéuticas: cómo las grandes farmacéuticas perjudican a los trabajadores, eluden los impuestos y extraen miles de millones en Puerto Rico”.

Es el primero de tres informes que se publicarán este año y que destacan las prácticas patronales abusivas de las manufactureras farmacéuticas que operan en Puerto Rico.

“Durante décadas, en Puerto Rico hemos escuchado acerca de los empleos bien remunerados que brindan las compañías farmacéuticas como la razón principal para otorgar enormes exenciones contributivas e incentivos económicos”, indicó Julio López Varona, codirector de Campañas del Center for Popular Democracy en declaraciones escritas.

“Nuestro informe demuestra que estas afirmaciones son más de las mentiras y promesas vacías para el pueblo. Cientos, sino miles, de trabajadores en Puerto Rico sufren condiciones de trabajo deficientes, incluso expuestos a riesgos de seguridad y salud, sobre todo durante la pandemia–todo mientras la industria farmacéutica continúa generando miles de millones”, añadió.

Este primer informe detalla a través de una serie de entrevistas con el personal de limpieza y seguridad de las plantas farmacéuticas, cómo estos patronos abusan de sus empleados exponiéndolos a riesgos de seguridad y salud, salarios mínimos y beneficios míseros o ausentes. La mayoría de estos empleados han laborado por décadas en la misma empresa bajo el salario mínimo, mientras que los directores ejecutivos de estas empresas ganan en promedio 20 millones de dólares al año.

Se proyecta que el sector manufacturero de Puerto Rico, del cual la industria farmacéutica es una gran parte, recibirá 14,568 millones de dólares en exenciones contributivas en 2022. Dicha cifra es mayor que el presupuesto operativo del gobierno de Puerto Rico. Y, sin embargo, el informe destaca que a pesar de más de 100 mil millones de dólares proyectados en exenciones contributivas entre 2017 a 2023, sólo se crearon 7,000 empleos directos e indirectos en una isla de 3.3 millones de personas.

“Este informe muestra cuán explotadoras son las compañías farmacéuticas estadounidenses en Puerto Rico”, dijo Maggie Corser, analista senior de investigación del Center for Popular Democracy y autora de este informe. “Cuando un director ejecutivo de una compañía farmacéutica gana 1,131 veces lo que ganan sus trabajadores, y no ofrece mejores condiciones de trabajo, solo podemos describir esta situación como poco ética y abusiva”.

“Esperamos que este informe llame la atención sobre la situación que atraviesan estos trabajadores y que se tomen medidas de acción que responsabilicen a las empresas farmacéuticas por su comportamiento opresivo”, dijo López Varona. “Ahora es el momento de revaluar lo que estas compañías realmente le ofrecen a nuestra gente y considerar formas de garantizar que los medios de subsistencia de los trabajadores se prioricen sobre las ganancias. A los puertorriqueños no nos sirve de nada que se establezcan aquí y generen miles de millones de dólares si no van a ofrecer mejores condiciones a los trabajadores, ni invertir o aportar al desarrollo económico de Puerto Rico.”

Se puede acceder al informe en: https://pr.populardemocracy.org/

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves says over fifty Teachers have already applied for resumption of work here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

This was among several issues addressed by the Prime Minister at a Media Conference yesterday, at Cabinet Room.

https://www.nbcsvg.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TEACHERS-APPLICATION.mp3

The Prime Minister issued another appeal to Teachers who stopped teaching because of the COVID-19 mandate to re-apply for their jobs.

https://www.nbcsvg.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TEACHERS-APPLICATION-1.mp3

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Black Immigrant Daily News

door Wilfred Leeuwin PARAMARIBO — Minister Armand Achaibersing van Financiën en Planning heeft woensdag officieel zijn ontslag, per 1 september,

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Dominica’s 2022/ 2023 budget has been signed and sealed; Prime minister Roosevelt Skerrit will deliver it today, Tuesday, 26 July at the parliament building on Victoria Street in Roseau.

So, nothing we say here will change the content of the budget presentation but that doesn’t stop most of us from suggesting that Dominica, more than ever before, has to make tough choices to halt our economic decline and put us on the road from crisis to recovery. We have concluded that many times and for many years during the presentation of the annual budget. Covid -19 and the current world economic situation makes that suggestion a no-brainer.

So, we hope and pray that this new budget will recognise the precarious social and economic position that Dominica is in today. But to make these fundamental changes require courageous leadership and the Prime Minister has to be willing to risk the loss of political capital in the process.

The unwillingness and, or inability of our current government and the government of the past two decades, to take these risks may explain why the nation seems to be stuck in neutral gear, unable to embrace new ideas that might disturb their political comfort zone.

For many years the enormous potential of our people to be creative, productive and strong has been crying out to be released. We hope and pray that the government has heard their cry this time and makes a genuine effort to halt our economic decline and set the country on a new path towards real development. Talking alone will not get us there; policies that only guarantee election victories will not get us there; only bold, and maybe unpopular, decisions will get us there.

Undoubtedly, the presentation of a country’s annual budget is an important event because it gives citizens an indication of the policies and programmes that their government intends to implement over a financial year. But unfortunately, budgetary debates and other discussions on the management of the country’s finances have become opportunities for political parties to score points.
On this occasion, we hope that the verbal diarrhoea that passes for substantial debate in parliament is abandoned and discarded. This is not the time to play politics, not the time to fiddle while the nation decays, not the time to turn brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour, one political party against another political party. These precarious times require statesmanship, require putting the country before the party and self, require honesty and transparency and building better together-blue and green and red.

We also hope too that the prime minister will banish the barren boast that his government was proud of its achievements and that the current government had demonstrated a certain level of disciplined economic management characterized by prudence and fiscal responsibility. He said these same words many times in the past. But one look at the size of the Cabinet of ministers, for instance, and you will know that this description, of prudent fiscal responsibility, is misleading, to put it mildly.

There’s no doubt about it: Dominica has one of the most bloated Cabinets in the Eastern Caribbean. And now that our economic survival is at stake, maybe the best time to make that bold move – cut the Cabinet by 50 per cent.

This year, we expect the same pronouncement. We also anticipate that the Prime Minister will list some of the same projects that he did last year under the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP). Last year too, we expressed the view that the budget that Prime Minister Skerrit presented to the people of Dominica did not contain the innovative programmes that could haul Dominica out of the precipice of economic stagnation into which the country has plunged.

As we said then, given the overwhelming 18-3 mandate that Mr. Skerrit received from the Dominican voters at the December 2019 general election, we expected much bolder, more daring budgets that would serve as a catalyst for action as Dominicans grapple with problems of the Covid-19 pandemic, the hurricane of 2017, unemployment, shrinking production and productivity and the debilitating effects of the migration of some of our brightest and best.

In budget presentations over the past years, it has been obvious that government adopts unimaginative approaches to solving the country’s problems. Consequently, there have not been any dramatic improvements in the economy-in tourism, agriculture and manufacturing- over the past two decades, at least.

A bolder budget, coupled with the removal of our current self-delusion, could set the stage for Dominica to be economically free, at last.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The Bulgin family is still trying to come to terms with the devastating loss of two brothers, 26-year-old Tavaris and 21-year-old Tavaughn Bulgin, in a tragic drowning incident in the US two days ago.

“Two boys one time, Oh God,” the boys’ father, Reverend Keith Bulgin, who is also the pastor at the Palmers Cross New Testament Church of God, told Loop News on Wednesday.

“I do everything for them. They were my boys, and they were so helpful. Tavaughn played keyboard in our praise and worship in the church, and Tavaris (the older brother) was the Sunday School superintendent, he was like a technological genius; he did the structure for the whole church….everything,” Reverend Bulgin said.

The brothers were part of a group that jumped off the infamous ‘Jaws Bridge that connects Edgartown to Oak Bluffs around 11pm on Sunday. Tavaris’ body was retrieved soon after, while the search is still on for the younger brother, who is presumed dead.

Jaws Bridge is said to be a popular tourist attraction on the island, and many people jump from it during the summer, despite a sign warning people against it.

The brothers were from Clarendon, Jamaica, and were working at a restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard as part of the popular summer work-and-travel programme, which provides employment opportunities for hundreds of university-age students from Jamaica each year.

They have two sisters.

On Tuesday morning, divers and other police units resumed the search for Tavaughn’s body, focusing on the side of the bridge bordering the inlet and pond, a state police spokesman told the Boston Globe. Police deployed side-scanning sonar technology Tuesday, which allows searchers to map the seafloor.

After failing to find Tavaughn Bulgin’s body Tuesday morning, crews worked their way back over to the bridge’s ocean side. But poor weather caused dangerous conditions, the spokesman said, and Tuesday’s search was suspended at 1 pm.

Going forward, weather conditions will be assessed on a day-by-day basis to determine whether it is safe to resume the search, an article in the Boston Globe reported a few hours ago.

By Claude Mills

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