There was a sto­ry re­cent­ly pub­lished in the lo­cal news­pa­pers about the ser­vice at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Pass­ports Di­vi­sion, where men­tion was made about the very prompt and cor­dial ser­vice re­ceived at this in­sti­tu­tion.

I con­firm that the ser­vice has tremen­dous­ly im­proved but may still need some tweak­ing. More im­por­tant­ly, I am sat­is­fied tremen­dous­ly that we are, I be­lieve as Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens, now on the way to pro­vid­ing a prod­uct that we can of­fer for sale to would-be tourists en­ter­ing our land of the hum­ming­bird and Car­ni­val. That prod­uct is "ser­vice".

Ser­vice should be from top-down. Ser­vice should be taught at home, schools and whereev­er, so that it would be au­to­mat­ic for lit­tle chil­dren and adults to give ser­vice with­out feel­ing un­com­fort­able while do­ing so.

There is this fa­mous quote: "He who doesn't know how to be a ser­vant should nev­er be al­lowed to be a mas­ter; the in­ter­ests of pub­lic life are alien to any­one who is un­able to en­joy oth­ers' suc­cess­es, and such a per­son should nev­er be en­trust­ed with pub­lic af­fairs." Let­ter to AN Pleshcheev (Oc­to­ber 25, 1888)} What I would like to see are peo­ple will­ing to make lit­tle sac­ri­fices to get the job prop­er­ly done.

This will not on­ly bring about a har­mo­nious liv­ing stan­dard it will al­so bring about less gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion and a re­duced bud­get deficits across the board. Are we will­ing to give it a try or are we just hap­py be­ing com­plain­ers and blind­ly pay­ing for what­ev­er that's be­ing thrown our way? Do the math, if you can walk for miles at Car­ni­val, you can def­i­nite­ly lift a hand to help your broth­er. Keep up the good work cit­i­zens, we are on our way to be­ing ser­vice ori­ent­ed.

Roger Di­az

San Juan