An­tho­ny Wil­son

I want to draw the at­ten­tion of the T&T pub­lic to some­thing that is hap­pen­ing in Ja­maica which should be em­u­lat­ed here. In that north Caribbean coun­try, there is some­thing called a Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme (Fresh Start) which was launched last week and which seeks to place some em­pha­sis on in­cul­cat­ing ap­pro­pri­ate val­ues and at­ti­tudes in the coun­try. In his com­men­tary in the last Sun­day Glean­er (a news­pa­per bet­ter known here for its scathing an­ti-T&T com­men­taries), a vet­er­an Ja­maican jour­nal­ist by the name of Ian Boyne wrote a piece which un­der­scored the im­por­tance of val­ues and at­ti­tudes in trans­form­ing the Ja­maican econ­o­my. Mr Boyne quot­ed from a re­lease is­sued by the of­fice of Ja­maica's Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing which was head­lined, "Mon­ey and jobs alone can­not trans­form Ja­maica."

In the re­lease, Mr Gold­ing is quot­ed as say­ing: "We make the mis­take so of­ten of be­liev­ing that our prob­lems are due to re­source lim­i­ta­tions; that, some­how, if we had the re­sources so that we could stop bor­row­ing and we could fix the roads and pro­vide as­sis­tance to all the peo­ple who are look­ing for as­sis­tance, then, some­how, our coun­ty would be on the road to pros­per­i­ty. "There are things which we need to do that can­not come out of leg­is­la­tion or gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy ac­tion. It has to come from a con­sen­sus that emerges from our peo­ple that this is where we want to go. We need to ad­dress de­fi­cien­cies that af­fect us as a peo­ple: How we live, how we think, how we treat each oth­er, how we re­late in our com­mu­ni­ties." The last sen­tence of the quo­ta­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly apt for T&T. We, too, need to ad­dress how we live, how we think, how we treat each oth­er and how we re­late in our com­mu­ni­ties. There is much else that is valu­able in the col­umn which I rec­om­mend to read­ers.

The ques­tion that should be asked in T&T of our Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is this: Would we be able to ad­dress the crime scourge that is blight­ing our coun­try and in­fect­ing its econ­o­my if we don't tack­le the is­sue of the val­ues and the at­ti­tudes of those who are com­mit­ting the crimes? If some­one has been brought up from in­fan­cy to obey a moral code which states that "Thou shall not steal," or "Thou shall not mur­der," or "Thou shall not com­mit adul­tery," are they more or less like­ly to rob, mur­der or horn? A big part of our crime prob­lem is that our young peo­ple are not grow­ing up hear­ing these mes­sages re­peat­ed every day–and that is be­cause their par­ents or guardians are not re­peat­ing them every day to their chil­dren.

How did this sys­tem of val­ues en­force­ment break down? Was it as a re­sult of mi­gra­tion or women mov­ing in­to the work­place? Did the 70s oil boom cor­rupt us in­to think­ing that we could eat bread with­out the sweat from thy brow? Is oil, or nat­ur­al gas, mon­ey bad for us and would we be bet­ter off if the whole so­ci­ety was poor?

Does pover­ty lead to sound val­ues and at­ti­tudes?

Where are the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists?

I was a lit­tle sur­prised that none of the coun­try's en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists have both­ered to take up my of­fer of space in the Busi­ness Guardian to re­spond to last week's col­umn in this space which was head­lined, "Does mon­ey grow on trees?" In that piece, I wrote about three jour­nal­ist col­leagues who are now liv­ing in hous­es that were heav­i­ly sub­sidised by the state and en­quired of those who dis­ap­prove of T&T's nat­ur­al gas-based in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion thrust where they thought the mon­ey to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to af­ford such an am­bi­tious hous­ing pro­gramme came from. Since the pub­li­ca­tion of that piece, I have been in­formed by one of the coun­try's top prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion ex­perts that in 2007, the con­struc­tion cost of a typ­i­cal three-bed­room, two-bath­room house of about 1,500 square feet in Ch­agua­nas would have been $325,000 and that such a com­plet­ed house would have sold for be­tween $800,000 and $900,000.

One of my col­leagues who lives in a state-sub­sidised house in Cen­tral Trinidad said she is pay­ing a mort­gage based on a price of $190,000. Gen­er­al­ly, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion sells hous­es to cit­i­zens of T&T for sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low what those hous­es could fetch on the pri­vate mar­ket and be­low the cost of house con­struct­ing.

1) Where did the Gov­ern­ment get the rev­enue that al­lowed it to sell a house at $190,000 that cost over $300,000 to build and was worth $800,000 on the open mar­ket? As an­oth­er ex­am­ple, some of the three-bed­room apart­ments in the HDC de­vel­op­ment at Bates Trace in San­ta Mar­gari­ta–which is one of the prici­est neigh­bour­hoods in the coun­try–are be­ing sold for $800,000 and would be worth twice that on the open mar­ket.

2) From where is the Gov­ern­ment, this one or any ad­min­is­tra­tion in the fu­ture, go­ing to get the rev­enue in the fu­ture to con­tin­ue build­ing hous­es for the fam­i­lies (many of them sin­gle moth­ers with two chil­dren) of this coun­try?

3) And where would the mon­ey come from to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue of­fer­ing two per cent mort­gages to oc­cu­pants of HDC homes when the cur­rent mar­ket rate for a pri­vate sec­tor mort­gage is up­ward of nine per cent?

These are the di­rect ques­tions that I most re­spect­ful­ly re­quest be an­swered by Wayne Kublals­ingh, Pe­ter Vine, Cathal Healy-Singh, Ju­lian Ken­ny, John Spence, At­til­lah Springer, Rhea Mun­gal, Eu­gene Rey­nald, Mary King, In­shan Ish­mael, Anil Roberts and all those who dis­ap­prove of T&T's in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion dri­ve. And I am of­fer­ing those men­tioned above, who do not have columns in oth­er news­pa­pers, the space to ven­ti­late their views in this pub­li­ca­tion and re­quest that those with columns in the oth­er news­pa­pers ad­dress the is­sue else­where. As an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist point­ed out last week, the is­sues ad­dressed in this space over the last three weeks or so are fun­da­men­tal­ly about the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try AND ITS PEO­PLE.

Will those who em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of peo­ple par­tic­i­pa­tion in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing of a mod­ern de­vel­op­ing coun­try both­er to re­spond to this fun­da­men­tal is­sue of T&T's fu­ture path? If they don't re­spond, how can they, in all con­science, con­tin­ue snip­ing and protest­ing at every at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to mon­e­tise T&T's nat­ur­al gas? With re­spect ap­proach­ing rev­er­ence for our Ju­di­cia­ry, might I sug­gest that the three ques­tions list­ed above are al­so ones that should be con­tem­plat­ed by the Court of Ap­peal pan­el that is due to hear in Oc­to­ber the ap­peal of the judg­ment in June which stat­ed that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty erred in grant­i­ng ap­proval to Alutrint to pro­ceed with an alu­mini­um smelter in La Brea. Might I al­so rec­om­mend the ques­tions to High Court judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, who de­liv­ered the thought­ful, thor­ough but, in my view, wrong judg­ment against the EMA. Please read on Page 10 the con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate from the one per­son who took up last week's of­fer.