Sascha Wil­son

The sys­tem of gov­er­nance is poi­son­ing T&T. This is the view of pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce, Sahid Ho­sein, who minced no words in point­ing out what he de­scribed as se­ri­ous is­sues fac­ing so­ci­ety. Speak­ing at the cham­ber's in­duc­tion cer­e­mo­ny at Chi­nese Drag­on Restau­rant in?Debe, on Fri­day night, Ho­sein said there was need for re­flec­tion.

Throw­ing out thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tions, he asked: "Will we pause to re­flect on our own poi­soned sys­tem of gov­er­nance? A sys­tem which has now be­come gan­grenous, a sys­tem which has for far too long been al­lowed to be par­ti­san and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.?Will we re­flect on the desta­bil­is­ing in­flu­ence of in­vis­i­ble mon­ey in our sys­tem?"

Ho­sein said cit­i­zens must re­flect on the sys­tem which ex­cludes tru­ly pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens from hav­ing a re­al say and mak­ing re­al con­tri­bu­tion in the Gov­ern­ment. "A sys­tem which pre­vents us from re­al­is­ing our fullest po­ten­tial as a na­tion.?A sys­tem which fa­cil­i­tates rule from on high: from top to bot­tom and not from bot­tom to top as in­tend­ed.?A sys­tem which pre­vents the strength­en­ing of our democ­ra­cy by starv­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment of funds yet pro­pos­es to give $10 mil­lion to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to be used at his or her own dis­cre­tion. What a poi­soned chal­ice we are all drink­ing from."

Com­plain­ing about elec­tion cam­paign fi­nanciers re­ceiv­ing mul­ti­mil­lion con­tracts and the Gov­ern­ment elite at their fin­ger­tips, he said: "That has be­come so preva­lent is the strongest in­di­ca­tion yet as to how ster­ile and bank­rupt our much vaunt­ed ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and our so­ci­ety has be­come." Ho­sein said that prac­tice is de­stroy­ing the very in­sti­tu­tions that con­sti­tute a civ­il so­ci­ety and if not stopped, "we vis­it an­ar­chy and chaos on our­selves."

Warn­ing that T&T is at risk of be­com­ing a failed state, he said: "We are al­ready at the edge of the precipice." Not­ing that one of the great­est chal­lenges is self-suf­fi­cien­cy in food, he said the Gov­ern­ment must be pre­pared to in­vest more heav­i­ly and im­me­di­ate­ly in that sec­tor.

Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment must free up gen­er­al­ly un­pro­duc­tive labour, redi­rect­ing Cepep and URP in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. He sug­gest­ed an ag­gres­sive re­train­ing pro­gramme for farm­ers in new­er and less labour in­ten­sive tech­nolo­gies.

In ad­di­tion, Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment must use the school sys­tem to stream stu­dents to­ward agri­cul­ture as a vi­able and lu­cra­tive ca­reer op­tion, giv­en the me­di­an age of ex­ist­ing farm­ers is 59 years.