JAMAICANS ARE expecting the Government to provide more than it can, especially at a time when the State can least afford it. This is the view of a team of professionals whose opinions were sought in a recently published study by the Latin American Public Opinion Poll Project.

The study found that Jamaicans were heavily and unrealistically dependent on the Government to fulfil many of their needs. It's a situation that is likely feeding into citizen/State tensions, the researchers say.

Going after tax dodgers

Finance Minister Audley Shaw, opening the Budget Debate in Parliament last week, announced an increase in the tax on petrol to shore up the national Budget. The minister said that Government would also be going after tax dodgers and a special forensic unit would be set up to handle this.

The range of services that the general populace looks to Government for, as highlighted in the survey, includes health care, funding for tertiary education, employment, housing and unemployment income.

Director of the United States Agency for International Development, Dr Karen Hilliard, whose agency put on the forum last week, said the country had possibly reached a point where people's expectations would never be met.

"... No matter which party is in Jamaica House! This is because there is a disconnect between people's expectations and the capability of the Government," Hilliard said.

She added that many people wanted the Government to provide services but were unwilling to provide the Government with the resources to fund those services.

"You ask them what kinds of services they expect from the State, and you ask them whether they pay taxes or they are willing to pay taxes, and there is a big disconnect," Hilliard elaborated.

Tax compliance in Jamaica is low compared to other countries. There are about 200,000 Jamaicans who are not declaring their taxes, Shaw said during his Budget presentation on Thursday. The burden of income tax is borne by the pay as you earn (PAYE) system.

"It's an issue which needs urgent debate by Parliament," former People's National Party senator and chairman of the Centre for Leadership and Governance at the University of the West Indies, Professor Trevor Munroe, argues, as people cannot expect Government to provide as it did 40 years ago.

Standard economic woes

"Our people expect the State to do today what it has done over the last 30 or 40 years, at a time when the State is least able to do it, because of the crisis; and at a time, because of standard economic woes, it has been deprived of the resources so to do," Munroe explained.