Dwight Gon­salves

Is com­mon sense re­al­ly so un­com­mon? Why would busi­ness­men in­vest thou­sands of dol­lars, time, ef­fort and en­er­gy in­to a busi­ness ven­ture and then do some­thing that would ham­per that very busi­ness?

A few bars were re­cent­ly shut down in the Wood­brook area when the res­i­dents armed with over 2,000 sig­na­tures went to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and the City May­or. As Mr Louis Lee Sing right­ly said, "We are all Tri­nis and as such en­joy hav­ing fun and a good lime, but peo­ple must have re­spect for the en­vi­ron­ment and must not in­con­ve­nience oth­ers."

Trinida­di­ans are now trav­el­ling world­wide and would al­ways ver­balise on their re­turn they how much they ap­pre­ci­ate and ad­mire the clean­li­ness and or­der they see abroad. In what is some­times re­ferred to as first world coun­tries, busi­ness­es co-ex­ist with res­i­dents. If these in­sti­tu­tions do not abide, they will be pe­nalised and even­tu­al­ly de­nied per­mits and li­cence re­new­al.

This "any­thing goes" at­ti­tude through­out T&T is not an at­tribute the av­er­age Tri­ni ap­pre­ci­ates; it is a mi­nor­i­ty who en­cour­age this, and we must not al­low them to spread. Imag­ine a smart, ed­u­cat­ed, oil-rich coun­try like ours hav­ing to con­stant­ly re­mind the bars and busi­ness own­ers of such ba­sic cour­te­sies:

1. Keep your mu­sic down, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing week­nights (the el­der­ly, chil­dren, school, work in the morn­ing)

2. Des­ig­nate a clean­er to go around the im­me­di­ate neigh­bour­hood and scoop up all cups and bot­tles, cig­a­rette butts and packs, food scraps and bro­ken bot­tles that we can as­sume came from your es­tab­lish­ment (all sur­round­ing busi­ness­es should con­tribute, in­clud­ing ven­dors)

3. Have the se­cu­ri­ty guards on the look­out for pa­trons at­tempt­ing to uri­nate on res­i­dents' walls and put up a sign.

4. Pa­trons who want to park and show off their "hard pound" (mu­sic) must be ad­vised to take it down es­pe­cial­ly af­ter hours when peo­ple are asleep

5. Se­cu­ri­ty and wreck­ers must al­ways be avail­able so as to dis­cour­age pa­trons from block­ing dri­ve­ways.

6. Old­er res­i­dents com­plain about hav­ing to step in­to the road­way when pa­trons oc­cu­py the en­tire pave­ment.

7. For God's sake man, when you take two drinks, why every sec­ond word out of your mouth has to be­gin with "F" and so loud? Not cool! Out­ta­tim­ing!

All think­ing cit­i­zens in T&T should bind to­geth­er and stand up against any un­scrupu­lous peo­ple in their neigh­bour­hoods. This any­thing-goes at­ti­tude must be fought against. So­cial­is­ing and hav­ing a good time we are blessed with, but let us safe­guard this easy-go­ing, fun-lov­ing na­ture we have be­come known for with ba­sic re­spect and clean­li­ness.

"When I was a child I used to think like a child and act like a child but now that I am a man, I must think like a man and act like a man." Our ex­am­ple is cru­cial. Let us be the change we want to see.

Dwight Gon­salves is a busi­ness­man and Wood­brook res­i­dent