Every summit ends with signed intentions and a headline number. The public has never been given the second number — the one counted in payslips.
Ask it plainly, because the question is plain: of all the investment announced from summit stages these past five years, how much money has actually been spent here, and how many permanent jobs has it given to people who live here?
Nobody in a position to answer has answered. That silence is the story.
The announcement has become the product. A memorandum is signed, a figure is read out, cameras record the handshake, and the number enters circulation as though it were a factory. But a memorandum of understanding is a statement of intent — not a contract, not a sanction, not a disbursement, and certainly not a hire. Between intent and employment lie land allotment, clearances, financial closure, construction and commissioning, and at each stage a share of the announced capital quietly falls away. Nobody publishes the attrition rate.
Then comes the second sleight of hand: the jobs that do appear are counted generously. Construction work that ends when the building ends is counted. Contract positions renewed every eleven months are counted. Workers brought in from outside the district are counted as local. Roles that exist only on a projection sheet years from now are counted today. Strip all of it out and the residue — permanent, on-roll, filled by residents — is the only figure that matters to a young person here deciding whether to stay or to leave. It is the figure nobody reports.
None of this is an argument against courting capital. Investment is necessary, the competition for it is real, and a government that stops chasing it fails its people. The argument is against measuring success by the size of the announcement rather than the size of the payroll. What gets celebrated gets repeated. If the celebration attaches to the signing, signings are what we will keep producing.
The remedy is unglamorous and entirely achievable: disclosure. Publish one public register, updated quarterly, tracking every project announced. For each: capital announced, capital actually invested to date, land allotted, current stage, and employment split into permanent and contract, local and non-local, with wage bands. Where a project has lapsed, say so and say why. Where incentives — concessional land, tax holidays, subsidised power — were granted against job commitments that were not met, state what has been recovered.
This is public money and public land. The people who furnished both are entitled to the arithmetic.
We will ask this question every quarter until it is answered, and we will print the silence if there is none. Officials holding the figures are invited to send them. Workers hired — or promised and not hired — are invited to tell us what happened.
Two numbers. Money on the ground, jobs on the roll. Everything else is a press release.
