JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

No end to the Unease

by

20120625

There are far too many weeks now when one won­ders what sort of coun­try one is liv­ing in, when one's fear for the fu­ture when the oil and gas mon­ey, that buffers our faults and soft­ens our mis­takes, is gone, and this past week was one of them. The usu­al sense of un­ease that was ex­ac­er­bat­ed in the dy­ing days of the Man­ning regime, by the con­stant crime and cor­rup­tion, con­tin­ues un­abat­ed af­ter two years of the PP coali­tion. The crime prob­lem con­tin­ues. Noth­ing has been done about past cor­rup­tion and there is a grow­ing be­lief that the scep­tics who bold­ly say "not a man ever make a jail in T&T for white-col­lar crime" are cor­rect. Too much co­coa in the sun. Busi­ness, de­spite the grow­ing num­bers of ex­pen­sive cars on the roads (ac­quain­tances glee­ful­ly tell me that new car sales and prices are up), ram­pant re­al-es­tate sales and chookup malls, con­tin­ues to com­plain that the mon­ey not mov­ing. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, one mem­ber of the coali­tion, a very ju­nior one, but one which rep­re­sent­ed labour, is gone, even if its for­mer leader has de­cid­ed to stay around for the ride. That of it­self cre­ates con­fu­sion. On­ly in T&T can a po­lit­i­cal par­ty re­sign from a gov­ern­ment and its main pa­tron refuse to de­part with them. Is this a trick? Is he a spy for labour?

To make things worse, the Prime Min­is­ter has just made some changes to her Cab­i­net that de­fy ex­pla­na­tion. For­get the jokey num­ber of min­is­ters and the un­at­tain­able Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion. She has re­moved the re­spect­ed brigadier from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and re­placed him with a gen­tle­man who has just re­signed from FI­FA af­ter wide­spread al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, FI­FA it­self now un­der sus­pi­cion for award­ing the next two World Cups si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly to a cou­ple of coun­tries which con­tain noth­ing of note, foot­ball-wise, but which do con­tain sand, sun, lots of mon­ey and not much of a le­gal sys­tem. Mr Warn­er is rou­tine­ly de­scribed in the me­dia as "hard-work­ing." Hard-work­ing he may well be, but to what avail? What has he ac­tu­al­ly done be­sides pave pri­vate roads and give press con­fer­ences and promis­es? What hap­pened to the fa­mous PH scheme? To the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route ini­tia­tive? To the an­nu­al flood­ing in Wood­brook? To the Point For-tin high­way? He should right­ly be called "Mr Promise."

The PM re­places the com­pe­tent, hard-work­ing and pas­sion­ate Ver­na St Rose-Greaves in the Min­istry of Gen­der Af­fairs, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, who in one year was able to do what oth­ers could not in ten years-get the Chil­dren Bill passed in Par­lia­ment-with a stranger to women's and chil­dren's so­cial prob­lems.

There goes the gen­der pol­i­cy, said one com­men­ta­tor. And the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, I would add. And any hope that there was for young peo­ple. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar may al­so have just lost the sup­port of many of the women's or­gan­i­sa­tions that she came from and that were amongst her staunchest sup­port­ers, and they are no fat-ar­se brigade. Else­where in the week, we had a num­ber of ob­ser­va­tions, hal­lu­ci­na­tions even, that trig­gered off ex­cla­ma­tions of sur­prise. Where else but in T&T you could stop a fete in the mid­dle of a for­est at 2 o'clock in the morn­ing and have peo­ple com­plain­ing? And have the vice-chair­man of the Ch­agua­nas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty that gave per­mis­sion for the fete to de­clare that they have no prob­lem with noise pol­lu­tion from the fete. "Who you pol­lut­ing out in the wilder­ness?" he is sup­posed to have ex­claimed. "You not dis­turb­ing neigh­bours!" What a promise for eco-tourism in Tuck­er Val­ley.

On­ly in T&T would you have a chil­dren's hos­pi­tal be­ing built ten miles from an­oth­er half-emp­ty chil­dren's hos­pi­tal, one still un­able to have its full com­ple­ment of doc­tors, nurs­es and tech­ni­cians. On­ly in T&T would you have the Health Min­istry in­tro­duc­ing a new vac­cine to try to pre­vent dis­ease in the fe­male pop­u­la­tion some­time in the fu­ture, at a time when there is no po­lio vac­cine and no sin­gle dose measles-mumps-rubel­la vac­cine in the health cen­tres to­day. On­ly in T&T could you have a wall proud­ly be­ing built around a hear­ing as­sess­ment cen­tre to cut down on the sounds of traf­fic so that hear­ing-im­paired peo­ple could get test­ed for hear­ing loss. In case no one knows, peo­ple are test­ed in sound­proof booths, not in open of­fices with a wall around them. You must have ab­solute si­lence to be able to test hear­ing. On­ly in T&T do you have a me­dia un­will­ing or un­able to in­ves­ti­gate these anom­alies but able to de­clare hap­pi­ly that a hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go is to be opened, "to be opened," not opened, but "to be opened," five years late, and to cheer­ful­ly pub­li­cise the launch of the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre for the sec­ond time in four years at the EWM­SC. We still await the ar­rival of the long-promised lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tor at the Na­tion­al Ra­dio­ther­a­py Cen­tre in St James, Port-of-Spain. Un­ease, un­easy, un­easi­ness!


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored