The Prime Minister announced recently that there will be a "realignment of ministries" in June. With the greatest of respect, I will make bold to offer the Prime Minister some unsolicited advice which, if taken, could put the country on a path to better governance, something which this country sorely needs. Almost every country of substance in the world today, either by force or by just plain common sense, is reducing the size of government. For example, by force we have Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and by common sense Cuba and the United Kingdom. Castro, recognising the error of his ways (at last) has sent one million people home and told them to seek jobs in the private sector. The UK Government is sending home 500,000 civil servants. No need to mention what has happened in Greece, Ireland etc. The People's Partnership, when it assumed power one year ago, appeared to know better than the rest of the world and actually increased the size of the government. We now have more minis- tries than ever and the largest Cabinet in the history of T&T. This in an atmosphere where the Minister of Finance continues to cry poverty as a reason for not paying his bills and meeting his commitments.
The PP squandered an excellent opportunity to make sweeping changes and at the same time seriously reduce the cost of running the country. Madame Prime Minister, I am sure it has not escaped your notice that the country simply cannot afford to finance this monster that has been created. Witness the question of the five per cent increase to public servants. There should have been no debate as to the quantum. The debate should have been to streamline (cut the force) and the pay a proper recompense for service. The Public Service, by the way, numbers some 90,000 and is bloated beyond belief. In fact, the country can do very well thank you with less that half that amount. I can now hear the voices of protest questioning what are we going to do with all the people on the breadline. The answer lies in privatisation. It is well known that governments are abject failures at running things. Put the burden on the private sector.
And then we have the question of the ministries. I believe we now have over 30 of them. This is an absurdity beyond belief. They now trample over themselves, overlapping one another and costing the country a fortune (that it cannot afford). Take for example the Ministry of the People. It would appear that the minister has hired the entire media to follow him around as he gives away our hard-earned tax dollars to anyone who can get before a TV camera and cry some hardship. This is ridiculous. You are trying to "out-PNM" the PNM. Madame PM, the fact that the PP's popularity has dropped like a stone indicates that all this lar-gesse being handed out is not working for you. It should be stopped now. The truth is that the country can be run efficiently with at most 12 ministries. To sum up, I think you will be doing the country a great service were you to take the bull by the horns and reduce the size of the government across the board. We cannot afford the cost and the eventual pain that the citizens will suffer if you continue along this path.
Frank Mouttet
Port-of-Spain