Ann Marie Bisses­sar

Ac­cord­ing to one re­port by the Unit­ed Na­tions, the World's pop­u­la­tion reached a stag­ger­ing 6.5 bil­lion peo­ple in 2005.There seemed to be, how­ev­er, vast dif­fer­ences in the spread of this in­crease. For in­stance, while some de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly Africa and Asia ex­pe­ri­enced in­creas­es in their pop­u­la­tions, some de­vel­oped coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant de­clines.In ad­di­tion, this re­port not­ed (De­vel­op­ment and Plan­ning, Unit­ed Na­tions) that half of the world's pop­u­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to live in ur­ban ar­eas. But in ad­di­tion to mov­ing to the more ur­ban cen­tres, the pop­u­la­tion of the world is be­com­ing old­er and the pro­por­tion of old­er peo­ple is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue ris­ing well in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

It is ex­pect­ed that the pop­u­la­tion of the world is ex­pect­ed to in­crease by 2.6 bil­lion peo­ple dur­ing the next 45 years-from 6.5 bil­lion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9.1 bil­lion in 2050.It was not­ed that 78 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in the Caribbean live in ur­ban ar­eas in 2005. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port by the UN, it is a pro­por­tion that is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than that of Eu­rope.Com­ing out of this re­port, then, are three ma­jor is­sues that the plan­ners in Trinidad and To­ba­go should take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when in­tro­duc­ing poli­cies-whether they are called mil­len­ni­um goals or oth­er­wise, name­ly:

• An ex­pan­sion in the pop­u­la­tion;

• An in­crease in the num­ber of ur­ban dwellers;

• An in­crease in the num­ber of old­er pop­u­la­tion well past their six­ties and sev­en­ties.

Giv­en these is­sues, it is ev­i­dent that the Gov­ern­ment in all coun­tries in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, have to take the fol­low­ing fac­tors in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. These in­clude:

The need to in­crease food pro­duc­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty;

The need to en­sure that there is a sup­ply of potable wa­ter;

The need to em­bark on ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion;

The need to put in place prop­er mech­a­nisms to en­sure the fol­low­ing:

• Ad­e­quate health fa­cil­i­ties;

• Ad­e­quate care for the el­der­ly;

• Ap­pro­pri­ate plan­ning for re­tire­ment;

• Tax con­ces­sions for the re­tired;

• Pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tems that are ef­fec­tive;

• Build­ings that fa­cil­i­tate the old­er and the dis­abled;

• Ap­pro­pri­ate fa­cil­i­ties for the el­der­ly.

• Cus­tomer ser­vice geared to­wards the el­der­ly and the dis­abled.

In ad­di­tion to poli­cies which are geared to­wards a fast age­ing pop­u­la­tion, gov­ern­ments are al­so faced with a num­ber of oth­er kinds of con­sid­er­a­tions. For in­stance, in the case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is clear that the coun­try is not pre­pared for the oc­cur­rence of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. For in­stance, one ma­jor is­sue is that in many ar­eas, in­clud­ing Mara­cas/St Joseph, and Diego Mar­tin, there is one road­way that leads in­to and out of the area.

In the case of land­slips, flood­ing and ac­ci­dents or per­haps ma­jor fires, the kind of chaos that will take place can on­ly be left to the imag­i­na­tion. While some may sug­gest that Port-of-Spain has per­haps more than two av­enues lead­ing out from the ma­jor city, as many would have ex­pe­ri­enced over the years-in cas­es of emer­gen­cies-es­cape from the cap­i­tal city can on­ly be de­scribed as 'night­mar­ish'.Clear­ly, there is a need for more in­tense plan­ning in these ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly where road and trans­port is con­cerned. Apart from the es­tab­lish­ment of al­ter­na­tive routes, though, what is ev­i­dent is that peo­ple are now build­ing apart­ments, and hous­ing near riv­er banks and even on the road­ways where there should be pave­ments.

What is emerg­ing then is a to­tal ne­glect of build­ing codes (as we have seen in the case where roofs are blown off or where lit­tle fly-by-night par­lours, garages, hair­dress­ing sa­lons and oth­er busi­ness­es are es­tab­lished). The im­pli­ca­tions for the ne­glect of prop­er build­ing codes and the lack of over­sight with re­spect to the en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion no doubt is brought to the fore when there is heavy rains or oth­er kinds of dis­as­ters, no mat­ter how slight.The task for any gov­ern­ment is there­fore heav­ier than an av­er­age man can re­al­ly en­vi­sion. The task is to jug­gle a num­ber of com­pet­ing de­ci­sions-for in­stance, what does one sac­ri­fice-hous­ing or food?

Does one pay the pub­lic of­fi­cers a high­er salary at the ex­pense of in­creas­ing the lev­el of in­fla­tion? How can one change the be­hav­iour or cul­ture of a peo­ple who are brought up on Cepep, Lidd or oth­er so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes? How does one change the at­ti­tude of peo­ple who be­lieve that steal­ing or cor­rup­tion is not small (tak­ing a pen­cil from of­fice sup­plies, us­ing the gov­ern­ment tele­phone for pri­vate calls), but on­ly refers to the 'rich' peo­ple (kick backs from pa­trons for po­si­tions on boards, com­mit­tees or lu­cra­tive con­tracts)?It was hor­ri­ble to lis­ten to peo­ple over the news who were com­plain­ing that they had a right to loot from the burnt out Cash and Car­ry store since they were for­mer pa­trons.

The task of any gov­ern­ment is in­deed dif­fi­cult. Are farm­ers who take state land con­sid­ered 'farm­ers' or, is every squat­ter a farmer? Do these 'farm­ers' have le­git­i­mate rights to squat on a piece of State land and then claim com­pen­sa­tion for loss­es while oth­ers must pur­chase lands?And then, what about prop­er­ty tax­es...will the pop­u­la­tion have to pay retroac­tive­ly ?One won­ders how the Gov­ern­ment plans...It would be use­ful to see if the Cab­i­net com­pris­ing mis­cel­la­neous tal­ents do re­al­ly sit down and plan in a col­lec­tive way for the good of a coun­try. Per­haps it may be use­ful to one day look in­to a sit­ting of Cab­i­net if pos­si­ble.In the mean­time, one can on­ly won­der if the Gov­ern­ment is re­al­ly cog­nisant of the mon­u­men­tal task it has ahead.