Now that the rains have abat­ed, the flood­wa­ters re­ced­ed and the sense of ur­gency di­min­ished, there will be the temp­ta­tion to ap­ply quick fix­es to ar­eas that need per­ma­nent so­lu­tions or to move on to the next cri­sis with­out in­cor­po­rat­ing the lessons in­to pub­lic pol­i­cy so­lu­tions. To im­prove its per­for­mance, any or­gan­i­sa­tion must first en­sure that it has iden­ti­fied the prob­lem or fail­ure, what has caused it, and analysed what must be fixed be­fore the or­gan­i­sa­tion de­ploys the re­sources nec­es­sary to achieve a long-term so­lu­tion.

But gov­ern­ments of­ten re­spond to is­sues by an­nounc­ing how much they will spend. This may be good pub­lic re­la­tions as it gives the im­pres­sion that there will be a se­ri­ous at­tempt to solve the is­sue. In re­sponse to the cur­rent crime wave, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter an­nounced that new CCTV cam­eras cost­ing over $70 mil­lion had been in­stalled. No one will ar­gue that CCTV cam­eras are an im­por­tant tool in crime fight­ing, but was this a so­lu­tion or sim­ply a pal­lia­tive an­nounce­ment to soothe an­noyed voic­es? Then came the an­nounce­ment of $150 mil­lion to ad­dress road re­pairs caused by the floods. Had there been enough time to ad­dress the en­gi­neer­ing re­quire­ments? Is this a re­al­is­tic es­ti­mate or does it sim­ply ad­dress resur­fac­ing one road?

Last week the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter an­nounced that he was seek­ing a $1.2 bil­lion loan fi­nanc­ing to ad­dress age­ing pipeline in­fra­struc­ture af­fect­ed by the floods. But a trans­for­ma­tion plan was an­nounced in 2019, the im­ple­men­ta­tion cost of which is sev­er­al times larg­er than the $1.2 bil­lion now sought. This loan is con­tin­gent on a wa­ter sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion plan. Sure­ly that plan was not de­vel­oped yes­ter­day, and ne­go­ti­a­tions have been on­go­ing for some time? Not to be out­done, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter an­nounced a $1-bil­lion bud­get sur­plus, the first in 14 years. Since this was not an­nounced or in­ti­mat­ed in the bud­get speech, it was a for­tu­itous re­sult of high­er en­er­gy prices, not the re­sult of any con­scious pol­i­cy.

Ad­dress­ing sys­temic is­sues re­quires more than just sim­ply spend­ing mon­ey and pub­lic re­la­tions an­nounce­ments. The cause of the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion is mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, and it can­not be solved overnight. It re­quires long-term pro­grammes in­formed by so­ci­o­log­i­cal in­for­ma­tion and crim­i­nol­o­gists re­in­forced by polic­ing mea­sures which are ap­pro­pri­ate. It does not re­quire mil­i­taris­ing the po­lice who in­creas­ing­ly look like sol­diers in blue cam­ou­flage, guard­ing emp­ty spaces.

Most peo­ple seem un­aware that Wright­son Road, Beetham High­way, Solomon Ho­choy High­way, the Fore­shore or por­tions there­of are all built on re­claimed land or through swamp land. The re­cent rains did not af­fect their per­for­mance or de­stroy their sur­face. What is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the con­struc­tion tech­niques used on those roads and the sec­ondary ones af­fect­ed by the floods? Since these roads were fund­ed by mul­ti-lat­er­als, did the pro­cure­ment method en­sure that they were built to a high­er stan­dard? Are the sec­ondary roads “per­ma­nent tem­po­rary roads” built to no stan­dard? In which case, $150 mil­lion in re­pairs is a give­away?

To change or­gan­i­sa­tion­al per­for­mance may some­times re­quire a lead­er­ship change in a prob­lem de­part­ment or min­istry as the in­cum­bent may not have the re­quired skills, train­ing, or tem­pera­ment. How­ev­er, dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments seem un­able to de­liv­er bet­ter re­sults. The pub­lic there­fore must be more vig­i­lant and hold its rep­re­sen­ta­tives to high­er per­for­mance stan­dards.