Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh says pub­lic of­fi­cers must learn from the mis­take made by Nizam Mo­hammed fol­low­ing the racial con­tro­ver­sy which brewed over the last two weeks.Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter dis­trib­ut­ing wheel­chairs at his Na­pari­ma con­stituen­cy of­fice in Princes Town yes­ter­day, Baksh said he had been lis­ten­ing to pub­lic re­ac­tions, both be­fore and af­ter Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards re­voked Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment as chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on Mon­day.

Baksh said he did not see any dif­fi­cul­ty with any­one rais­ing the is­sue of eth­nic im­bal­ance in the Po­lice Ser­vice."What mat­ters is what you say, how you treat with it and the way you put it across...That is what would make a dif­fer­ence in what oth­ers are clam­our­ing about," he said.De­spite this, Baksh said Richards had tak­en a de­ci­sion and there was noth­ing any­one could do about it."Gen­er­al­ly, we can­not ques­tion the Pres­i­dent or take him to court," he said.

"Peo­ple could have dis­cus­sions on the way­side about it, but it will have no ef­fect right now on what is said and done."He added, how­ev­er, that pub­lic of­fi­cials must learn from Mo­hammed's er­ror."It is a les­son for all of us that when we are in pub­lic scruti­ny, we have to be care­ful of what we say and how we do things...We have to be very trans­par­ent and fair," Baksh said.He said there was pub­lic per­cep­tion that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was un­der pub­lic scruti­ny more than ever be­fore.Baksh said he did not think Richards had to give any ex­pla­na­tion for his ac­tions to re­voke Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment.

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All­isha Ali, 22, ail­ing from cere­bral pal­sy, was one of six peo­ple who re­ceived wheel­chairs. The oth­ers were 83-year-old Baramdeo Maraj, who suf­fers from arthri­tis, Wendy Stephens, Vish­nu Ram­jat­tan, Joseph James and Rooki­ah Sook­wah.