 Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. Good afternoon Mr. Speaker and good afternoon to colleague parliamentarians. I wish Mr. Speaker, before I continue to speak on this resolution which seeks to get the authority from parliament for the Minister of Finance to finance to borrow 5,217,000 dollars from the special funds resources of the bank to finance safety nets for vulnerable persons affected by COVID-19. Before I make my brief contribution Mr. Speaker, I want to join other colleagues and to express condolences to the family of the youngness who met her demise in a very tragic way earlier today. I wish to express my profound sadness not only to the family but to the other nurses and especially to the staff of the Millennium Heights Medical Complex and all other health institutions. I am being told Mr. Speaker that she was well loved and her family is in deep grief. I also wish Mr. Speaker to take this opportunity to wish all musicians happy feast of musicians in the constituency of V4North where I confirm we have a rich tradition of musicians and families of musicians and there are so many of them Mr. Speaker I wish all of them well and I am hoping that today they will relax and spend some good time with their families and with members of the community. Mr. Speaker the impact of COVID-19 on St. Lucia and the Caribbean are well known in some quarters and in other quarters Mr. Speaker we are still counting or trying to assess the impact of COVID-19. I want to spend just a few minutes to speak to this resolution Mr. Speaker but I wish to borrow from the work of Lilia Buwenkiewic who is the World Bank's Country Director for Caribbean Countries and she has this discussion which she offered in August of this year on the COVID-19 its impacts and how Mr. Speaker we should be thinking of strengthening social protection systems and rethinking social protection systems especially in light of the impacts of COVID-19. She offers a few suggestions and I want to use her arguments Mr. Speaker as a basis for my discussion today. Mr. Speaker as we all know the COVID-19 pandemic has on the mind food security on a global scale. I think it's important to remind members and the general public that the impacts of COVID-19 the negative impacts of COVID-19 some of them are health related unfortunately death all over the Caribbean and the world but the impacts have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and just to mention Mr. Speaker this year the World Food Program estimates that 40% or 2.8 million people in the English speaking Caribbean will struggle to access adequate food and remain food secure. It's important to note Mr. Speaker but in addition to COVID-19 30% of global wheat imports and almost 20% of corn exports more than 50% of the sunflower oil supply globally are in problems. Exports have stalled food prices are on the rise I think it's very important for our people to understand for our constituents to understand that all of these things will cause the impacts of COVID-19 to be even more severe. We are seeing reports of food prices going up and we have also seen Mr. Speaker the highest levels in terms of fuel prices since 2008 why are all these things important in this discussion these things are important because people in our communities and our constituencies are under pressure they are under pressure because COVID-19 wreaked havoc on our social infrastructure COVID-19 destroyed many families some of the breadwinners of the families are desist unfortunately and some people continue to suffer so there is an urgent need according to Lilia Buenewijk for us to look at social protection systems and to buffer our economies to protect the vulnerable Mr. Speaker the crisis is compounded by the fiscal strain on the governments you heard a while ago the opposition is chastising this government indicating that we promise to give people things that we are not giving to them I was pleasantly surprised not surprised but I was very happy when the member for CASTRI's central went into the history of the management of this economy by the member for Mikusov and I was happy when he mentioned the record which the member for Mikusov got in 2016 the healthy economy and the rebound the reduction of the fiscal deficit to 3.1% I believe moving from almost 9% when the member for Duford South came into government and how he squandered that is the member for Mikusov how he squandered this wonderful opportunity by going on a frolic of his own a frolic in his own mind Mr. Speaker to enter into all kinds of deals and his answer to economic growth is revenues revenues that as long as you have revenues you have economic growth today is not the day for a discussion on economics Mr. Speaker but clearly his strategy did not work and we are in a lot of problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis the World Bank suggests a few things and I listened to my colleague the member for Caster East this morning and I was very comforted by the fact that a number of suggestions by the World Bank Mr. Speaker I heard him speak about how the professionals in his ministry are working towards these suggestions the first is for us to update our poverty data and target in mechanisms I know for example Mr. Speaker that we are encouraging our professionals to focus on the data get the data right I know we are encouraging community groups to get involved the World Bank also indicates that we should implement economic inclusion programs and when you look at the work of this government the department of commerce when you look at what is happening with our programs and in a while the loan for small businesses is coming you will understand Mr. Speaker that this government is focused on implementing economic inclusion programs the World Bank suggests also that we modernize the social protection system and increase institutional capacity I heard the minister speak about PAP and he is very fond of discussing PAP the public assistance program we need to modernize that we know Mr. Speaker that in the last government we know the kinds of havoc that was wrecked on the public assistance program and we are still trying to understand how certain people found themselves there and how we can use a modern tool and a fair tool to get help to those people who really need help there are number of people in my constituency Mr. Speaker who should be in this program and as to why they are not in this program I don't know so I am very pleased that the minister and his ministry are trying to rectify this problem are trying to improve the public assistance program and the World Bank also suggests that we strengthen social insurance and labour market programs and work is ongoing with the help of the World Bank and OECS to do this so we need to strengthen the grassroots level involvement in this public assistance strategies and to reimagine social protection but Mr. Speaker our government has demonstrated that we are a progressive government a government which has implemented in its short stint so far a number of policies in social protection as we know social protection policy progressive social protection policy is really an investment the people have evidence of our actions Mr. Speaker look at in the post Covid era although we still have Covid 19 we can begin to think about a developing post Covid era we have serious issues to consider still our government is considering those issues and you the people are in the mind of our government look for example we know Mr. Speaker that although Covid 19 infections are going down we know a number of people who get Covid 19 we are recovering but now we are discovering that many people who are infected with Covid 19 seem to have complications which may affect the future productive lives and that's a very serious problem we in the department of health wellness and elderly affairs we are looking at this problem and we are beginning to speak we are speaking with car for power and the other agencies to find out how serious this is why people are recovering from Covid 19 people are reporting all kinds of pains and aches and things that they never had before and they are now going to certain doctors more regularly they are seeing specialists for ailments that they never had before so this is something we have to consider when we look at social protection it means Mr. Speaker that some people even though they got Covid and they have recovered it looks as if we may have another crisis down the road and it's a looming crisis of long Covid and people who do not understand yet what's happening to them after they have contracted Covid and recovered so social protection we need to go down that road too and begin to look at how how will that affect the workplace and how will it affect our productive capacity here it requires for us to be guided by the evidence the change in nature of work for example since Covid 19 a lot of workplaces have changed the operations and how does that impact social protection the labour market programs Mr. Speaker look at what this government has done access to tourism through community tourism activities the youth economy and the opportunities that can be found there very soon access to funding by the youth will come through the youth economy look at education look at what this government has done and if we are talking about social protection we are talking about parents who got impacted by Covid 19 and the government came in and said we know you are impacted by Covid 19 little by little let me take off some pressure of you so we went and we paid the facilities fees we paid the CXE fees when you negotiated with flow and there is the flow bundle and a number of individuals have been connected right now as we speak so when we speak of social protection when we speak of a government with a conscience with a focus with a focus on protecting individuals in the communities our government is there for you the people our government is focused on that Mr. Speaker access to information technology where a parent would have to probably get close to a thousand EC dollars to purchase a laptop our government is ensuring that the parents, you the parents get some protection and to ease off the burden from you a bit and when we speak of micro businesses in a way we will hear a debate on the loans for micro businesses more opportunities for social protection because the world bank and all the experts are saying yes we have to give transfers and we have to help people out but the best form of social protection in the long run is to ensure that you graduate these people and you give them skills so that at the end of the day they can survive on their own and they can create even better opportunities for other people through employment so Mr. Speaker I support this loan Mr. Speaker we came here to lend money but we didn't even lend money Mr. Speaker we came here to lend money to help our country when we were in elections we went to power Salve Is Ediki Kailasa koazee we served we got contractor we got BLOSSATY so the people who did it the people who helped the people who had a difficulty with Covid-19  Ky kofi  door kofi  door kofi  door kofi  door kofi  door kofi  door kofi  door ,     k ug n chassis re gas a tut lat air de mii  de mii  re le obisint pre gas  re kiiI Pli ho abriza de pi      k su ti de pi  de mii lüip nū dā kumasek mī kū kō vi e fō kō asla wei se goel centresala nū kāi mete plīb faciliter dīdā yō ko sā plī mūn kāi jōn plī service evēk se sā guvēr mā sā a kāfē pōi dēs a fēr sōsiala ko sā mē kāi sīpōte pōi dēs a sā lā ek se pa rā mā dī pōi dē se rā mā dī se a jō nū kāi pōi dē fū bō mēsō ek pōi dē mūn pa pōi dē shu val pa pōi dē shu val kī vinā valo pītāle pa pōi dē dē sētj pōi dē go shī mē twēz milion dola ek shu nū pītāla pa fēr pēs pa pōi pē pēs se bāgāi sā lā se pōi dē mūn ek se sā guvēr mā sā a bō mēsī a shā i mī sētj