To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Res­i­dents of Pi­o­neer Dri­ve in Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, blocked the west­bound car­riage­way of the Beetham High­way with burn­ing tyres and oth­er de­bris on Sat­ur­day, an­gry that T&TEC had re­fused to come to the area to be­gin re­pairs with­out a po­lice es­cort. Elec­tric­i­ty was not avail­able in the area for more than half day, from 1 am un­til 3.30 pm, when the peo­ple of Pi­o­neer Dri­ve took to the streets. This is a mat­ter with mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, each of which needs to be ad­dressed with good sense and a com­mit­ment to ur­gency. We have, in this space, al­ready con­demned An­cil Ro­get's blan­ket threat that "No safe­ty for T&TEC work­ers, no elec­tric­i­ty for any­one." That an­gry rhetoric serves no one and puts no im­pe­tus in­to any mean­ing­ful ef­fort to rec­on­cile the re­al­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go's se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion with the need to de­liv­er pub­lic ser­vices to tax­pay­ers.

The OSH Act clear­ly spells out process­es and pro­ce­dures for em­ploy­ees to han­dle sit­u­a­tions in which there is an ex­pec­ta­tion of ex­ces­sive or un­nec­es­sary risk, and out­lines the meth­ods that em­ploy­ees must fol­low when they en­counter ar­eas of po­ten­tial dan­ger. The shoot­ing of St Servius Pam­phille on No­vem­ber 3, while en­gaged in a rou­tine me­ter-read­ing in Mt D'Or, was, how­ev­er, not the kind of job en­dan­ger­ment sit­u­a­tion nor­mal­ly en­vi­sioned by the drafters of oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty leg­is­la­tion. The OSH Act, built on the frame­works of oth­er, sim­i­lar le­gal in­stru­ments in use around the world, fo­cus­es on or­di­nary, of­ten over­looked, cir­cum­stances of en­dan­ger­ment which can be min­imised by fore­thought and care­ful ad­her­ence to com­mon­ly-un­der­stood safe­ty pro­ce­dures.

Clear­ly, the cir­cum­stances in which Pam­phille was shot and in which work­ers are ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er ser­vices in so-called "hot spot" ar­eas of Trinidad and To­ba­go re­quire fresh think­ing to re­dress. It is cer­tain­ly not the fault of T&TEC, or oth­er pub­lic util­i­ties ex­pect­ed to pro­vide ser­vices to the whole of Trinidad and To­ba­go, that there are now places in the coun­try where it is sim­ply not safe to work with­out ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion. Nor should there be an ex­pec­ta­tion that the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens liv­ing in these ar­eas would have to forego the sup­ply of es­sen­tial ser­vices due to them, be­cause of the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that has lodged it­self in their com­mu­ni­ties. In a per­fect Trinidad and To­ba­go, there would be no such thing as crime hot spots. Pub­lic ser­vants and pri­vate sec­tor em­ploy­ees would be free to walk all the streets of the na­tion ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties, but that isn't the coun­try that we live in to­day, and clear­ly, changes will have to be con­sid­ered.

Those changes can­not be dri­ven by an­tag­o­nism, ei­ther on the part of rhetoric-dri­ven trade union­ists or cit­i­zens break­ing the law to ad­dress what they see as a greater in­jus­tice. At the nexus of this crit­i­cal fail­ure of law en­force­ment, ob­vi­ous pub­lic need and gov­ern­ment's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide es­sen­tial ser­vices to its cit­i­zens is a prob­lem that de­mands an in­ven­tive so­lu­tion. It is un­rea­son­able to ex­pect ser­vice crews to en­ter ca­su­al­ly ar­eas of Trinidad and To­ba­go which the Po­lice Ser­vice wouldn't ap­proach un­less they were in force, armed and wear­ing pro­tec­tive gear. But it's al­so un­rea­son­able to ex­pect cit­i­zens to sim­ply ac­cept that they may have to do with­out es­sen­tial ser­vices like elec­tric­i­ty, tele­phone ser­vice and wa­ter be­cause of their lo­ca­tion on our is­land.

If this coun­try can plan strate­gies to keep world lead­ers, pres­i­dents, prime min­is­ters and their en­tourages safe, it should not be be­yond the brain trust at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to cre­ate a task force as­signed to the main­te­nance and up­keep of crit­i­cal ser­vices in the ar­eas that it has al­ready iden­ti­fied as crime hot spots. This qui­et, creep­ing in­sur­rec­tion de­mands a re­sponse, and keep­ing street lamps lit, tele­phones in work­ing or­der and wa­ter flow­ing in taps will send an im­por­tant mes­sage to vi­o­lence-prone crim­i­nals about who is ac­tu­al­ly in charge of the coun­try. The al­ter­na­tive is too dis­turb­ing to con­tem­plate. In a Trinidad and To­ba­go where crim­i­nals de­cide, even if tan­gen­tial­ly, who is served by the pub­lic sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment will have con­ced­ed ter­ri­to­ry to the law­less, and the on­ly thing left to be de­cid­ed is where the bound­aries are drawn. That sim­ply can­not be the case.