I think that the time has come for the Government of T&T to think long and hard about privatising all state entities in this country.We have a culture of dependence and a huge sense of entitlement. Look at the waste of manpower and taxpayer resources at a typical T&TEC or Cepep jobsite. You have one or maybe two men working and the rest sitting under a tree, yet they are all getting paid to do a "job".
WASA also suffers from this chronic overabundance of manpower, with a similar outcome of low productivity. Then there's the PTSC. Their drivers recently had industrial action seeking a wage increase, among other things. They got what they wanted, yet the travelling public is being held hostage by the bus drivers.
For the past couple of days there has been some work stoppage at the bus terminals in San Fernando and Port-of-Spain. There's nobody around at the information desk to inform the travelling public about the status of the service. When you are actually able to get someone's attention they behave as though they are doing you a favour by doing their job.
I think that this proves beyond doubt that you can't throw money at a problem and hope that it goes away. More than anything we really need a cultural shift, a shift in our attitude.
On February 6, I, along with dozens of commuters, waited at Mt Hope from 5.45 pm to 9.28 pm for a bus going to San Fernando. This is very unacceptable and needs urgent attention. One of the fundamentals of every developed society is the ability to move its workforce efficiently.
This means that if we aspire to be first world we need a functioning mass transit system. It's not rocket science. The solution is to privatise it all, get rid of the entire workforce, and bring back fewer staff on probation and contract. This is the only way that the taxpaying public would get value for their taxpaying dollar. We don't need more highways in the country; we need an efficient mass transit system that affords people an alternative to driving in their cars.
We have less than 1.3 million people, a total land area of approximately 1980 square miles, a couple hundred kilometres of road (most in horrid condition), and over 500,000 cars. This equates to a very unsustainable situation.
Sherwin P Cedeno
Princes Town