Businesses do their part

BUSINESSES EMPLOY PEOPLE because you know what? Government alone cannot do it. Businesses pay taxes, NIS contributions, customs duties, insurance, road taxes.

Businesses adopt schools and provide sponsorship for events such as NAPSAC and BSSAC. Businesses provide paint to brighten a school plant, provide tablets and computers and give equipment and other vital resources needed to run schools.

Businesses allow their employees to come into schools to give seminars, to fix bathrooms and classrooms and donate prizes for speech days, sports events and other important functions.

Businesses help our churches and their youth arms by giving sponsorship or donating food and other items for vacation Bible school and other summer camps.

Businesses donate equipment to the QEH, polyclinics and other medical facilities to ensure that our people receive the best care and treatment possible.

Businesses sponsor football, netball, cricket teams and other clubs where young people are positively engaged in meaningful activities and at the same time learn a skill and showcase talent which, if harnessed to its fullest, allows them to represent this nation at the next Olympics.

Businesses feed our elderly and our children by donating fruit and vegetables and food items to our district and geriatric hospitals and our children’s homes.

Businesses donate funds to purchase plane tickets and provide accommodation for parents who need medical assistance for their children overseas but are unable to afford it. Businesses help to clean up our beaches of the Sargassum seaweed.

Businesses donate land to educational institutions such as the University of the West Indies to allow them to expand their facilities where they can provide a wider variety of courses to individuals and at the same time provide employment opportunities for people.

Businesses have helped those with special needs to allow them to live a better and more comfortable life.

Businesses have donated items to our Caribbean neighbours such as Haiti, Jamaica and Grenada when they were severely affected by natural disasters. Businesses, businesses, businesses, businesses.

The list goes on . . . . Oops, I forgot . . . and they donate money and other resources to political parties. How could I have forgotten that?

– ROCHELLE EDWARDS