The re­cent elec­tion poll com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia has shown that what is wor­ry­ing vot­ers the most are poor pub­lic util­i­ties and un­em­ploy­ment. The third most im­por­tant is­sue iden­ti­fied through the poll con­duct­ed by HHB & As­so­ciates is about youth train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

The out­come of the sur­vey may not be sur­pris­ing, as we are all be­com­ing painful­ly aware of the po­ten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on jobs by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. And, when it comes to pub­lic util­i­ties, we know all too well how poor ser­vices like wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty are.

Both is­sues share some com­mon threads, though, to­geth­er with the ques­tion over youth train­ing and de­vel­op­ment. The main one be­ing the way we han­dle em­ploy­ment in the coun­try.

The pop­u­la­tion ought to be wor­ried about un­em­ploy­ment, even though T&T has, so far, avoid­ed the kind of rise in job­less­ness seen in many coun­tries around the world.

As much as some union lead­ers would like to de­ny it, the rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of ad­di­tion­al job loss­es so far has been pri­mar­i­ly down to em­ploy­ers in T&T do­ing their very best to avoid re­trench­ment de­spite the hit they have been tak­ing since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, this may not be sus­tain­able, es­pe­cial­ly if the world ends up fac­ing an even longer pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty over new in­fec­tion spikes, adding to the depth and length of a glob­al re­ces­sion (no won­der in­vestors were spooked by the re­cent record-break­ing GDP drop in the US). None of this will make life eas­i­er for the young ei­ther, as we dis­cussed in last week’s col­umn.

And, as far as pub­lic util­i­ties are con­cerned, the prob­lem here is not lack of em­ploy­ment but the op­po­site: too much of it. We all know that bloat­ed pay­rolls and poor per­for­mance man­age­ment are the norm, not the ex­cep­tion, in our state-owned com­pa­nies. On top of that, their typ­i­cal­ly poor man­age­ment stan­dards, un­fair sub­si­dies and un­re­al­is­tic pric­ing don’t help at all.

But here is the prob­lem we face: de­spite vot­ers telling us what is trou­bling them the most, our main po­lit­i­cal par­ties are en­ter­ing the fi­nal phase of the cam­paign­ing with­out clear and re­al­is­tic plans to tack­le these prob­lems.

We have all heard lofty promis­es of im­proved state ser­vices be­fore. Or more em­ploy­ment, usu­al­ly by land­ing tax­pay­ers with even high­er li­a­bil­i­ties through poor­ly de­vised and ex­e­cut­ed pro­grammes or projects.

But the fact is that none of these is­sues that are trou­bling vot­ers will be sort­ed by the quick fix­es or pain­less so­lu­tions lead­ers from all sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum tend to ped­dle ahead of elec­tions.

What we re­al­ly need are deep­er and mean­ing­ful im­prove­ments to our labour laws. We must con­sid­er­ably im­prove our in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions en­vi­ron­ment by mod­ernising our le­gal frame­work and en­sur­ing we have the kind of dy­nam­ic jobs mar­ket that is es­sen­tial for the growth of mod­ern economies.

Fun­da­men­tal rights for work­ers must be main­tained–this is not about a com­plete­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed and po­ten­tial­ly un­fair labour mar­ket. But this is about en­sur­ing busi­ness and jobs can move with the times, adapt as need­ed and con­tin­u­al­ly in­vest in skills de­vel­op­ment for them to re­main com­pet­i­tive in a glob­al mar­ket.

The pan­dem­ic makes the need for re­form even greater, as coun­tries around the world will ag­gres­sive­ly seek to kick-start their economies and gain new mar­kets for their prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Changes to our labour laws, to­geth­er with the po­lit­i­cal will by who­ev­er wins the elec­tions, can al­so make a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on how our state com­pa­nies are run and how ef­fi­cient they can be.

In the Gov­ern­ment’s la-la-land, there are no per­for­mance met­rics re­quired and in­fla­tion is al­ways ze­ro when it comes to their pric­ing, whilst in­fla­tion is al­ways high when it comes to salary in­creas­es.

State-owned com­pa­nies of­ten of­fer the best terms and con­di­tions in the coun­try–at the ex­pense of the tax­pay­er–whilst pro­vid­ing the worst in terms of qual­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

That can hap­pen be­cause they are of­ten mo­nop­o­lies, with the pub­lic hav­ing no al­ter­na­tive. Af­ter all, you can’t get elec­tric­i­ty or wa­ter with­out hav­ing to en­gage with T&TEC and WASA, ir­re­spec­tive of their per­for­mance.

And, in a typ­i­cal­ly pop­ulist ap­proach, the Gov­ern­ment is al­ways re­luc­tant to charge a fair amount for these ser­vices, with prices left un­touched for years if not decades. Of­ten, state com­pa­nies pay to de­liv­er the ser­vices they charge you for, cre­at­ing an opaque and un­fair sub­sidy sys­tem, with true costs hid­den and the state ef­fec­tive­ly sub­si­dis­ing the rates ir­re­spec­tive of whether the user is a mil­lion­aire or a pau­per.

There is still a chance we will hear grown-up, in­tel­li­gent and hon­est pro­pos­als by our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to deal with the re­al is­sues that need tack­ling if we are to grow in a sus­tain­able and eq­ui­table way.

The like­li­hood is small, though, at least if judged by usu­al mud­sling­ing, al­le­ga­tions of bobol and bac­cha­nal, and pop­ulist, un­re­al­is­tic pledges that are al­ready very much present on this cam­paign trail.

So much was said about how the pan­dem­ic could be­come a wa­ter­shed mo­ment, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rad­i­cal­ly change for the bet­ter the way we do things. From what we have seen so far in these elec­tions, our po­lit­i­cal par­ties have shown lit­tle or no in­ter­est in do­ing so.

It doesn’t help that, in the land of the ibis and the hum­ming­bird, our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, from all par­ties, con­tin­ue to wrong­ly think all we want to see and feed are mag­ic uni­corns in­stead.

We de­serve bet­ter choic­es, even more so when we are clear­ly not out of the pan­dem­ic’s grip yet, with a re­al and present dan­ger of more lives be­ing lost and more eco­nom­ic pain ahead, in­clud­ing job loss­es.