As I read all the commendable columns lamenting the impending demise of Plastikeep from our waste disposal landscape, I sigh at our country's impotence to recognise what really matters for the population's survival in the 21st century.Politicians continue to litter their election platform speeches with sexual innuendos and "la basse" talk, deftly side-stepping the responsibility of addressing change, change that matters not only to the environment, to the wildlife, to our culture and children's upbringing, but to our economic survival.
Recycling makes dollars and sense and this is the case that must be built because it is the only argument to which politicians and their financiers, the businessmen, will respond.I supported the Congress of the People (COP) party in 2007. I voted for breaking the poverty cycle, flood control now, community-based urban rebirth with a cleaner environment, taking on the world in tourism, transforming our coasts and developing eco-tourism, among others.
The COP has since joined with the UNC party but I wonder if, from time to time, COP leaders do not glance back at the original manifesto and connect the dots between recycling and achieving their wish list, and making representation for such. I have yet to hear this on a political platform.Instead, we as a people continue fishing for get-rich-quick schemes as if economic diversification would just happen by magic, instantly, by grabbing at what other countries are doing without considering the infrastructure and capacity needed to get there.
Recycling is one of the many building blocks needed in that process of transformation. The newspapers tout: "Are we ready for medical tourism?" Really, is that the latest delusional hype? Perhaps we are too intoxicated by the prosperity of petroleum to realise that we are fast becoming a pest-infested paradise of plastic waste incapable of attracting travel tourists, let alone medical tourists seeking healing.
What are our comparative advantages over destinations such as Cuba and Costa Rica, aside from the wine and jam that even our politicians are happy to publicise?
Wisdom truly comes from the mouth of babes. One 13-year old Austrian girl living temporarily in T&T, and whom I tutor, described her experience of a Caribbean cruise over the Christmas vacation. Her most memorable stop was Haiti, not the poverty stricken part, but the make-believe paradise of zip lines and a heavily-guarded, fenced in resort for cruise ship tourists. It was the part that had been "botoxed" into an idyllic beauty. It was the part where the roads and waters were clean and cleared of rubbish.
Soraya Aziz