Raphael John-Lall

The (TTC­SI) Di­anne Joseph would like to see an im­prove­ment in the con­di­tions that lo­cal busi­ness­es op­er­ate in.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, she spoke about the cur­rent busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, her plans for the TTC­SI among oth­er is­sues that are af­fect­ing the world of busi­ness.

Joseph as­sumed of­fice on May 3 and has been an ac­tive mem­ber of the TTC­SI since its in­cep­tion in 2006.

She will serve as the TTC­SI’s pres­i­dent for three years.

“The for­eign ex­change chal­lenges, crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, gun vi­o­lence and what law en­force­ment has de­scribed as gang-re­lat­ed of­fences are among the sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cles for do­ing busi­ness in T&T. This has been so for some time and ap­pears to be on a con­tin­u­ous up­ward tra­jec­to­ry. While our gov­er­nors have been seek­ing to get a hold on these chal­lenges, those in­volved seem to have their ‘busi­ness plans and strate­gies’ aimed at keep­ing them ahead. Many coun­tries have is­sued guide­lines to their cit­i­zens on the need for ex­tra cau­tion when vis­it­ing this coun­try and this can­not be con­sid­ered a good sig­nal for the ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T,” she said.

She said the talk of cy­ber­crime, ex­tor­tion, kid­nap­ping, rob­bery, theft and the con­stant blood­shed are all neg­a­tive is­sues that can be as­so­ci­at­ed with the neg­a­tive as­pects of life that T&T now faces.

“Our gov­er­nors and many stake­hold­ers can­not be fault­ed for not seek­ing var­i­ous av­enues to counter these un­want­ed forces. But, one of the big­ger prob­lems for our gov­er­nors is get­ting a good hold on those who are charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect our peo­ple, bor­ders, coun­try and oth­er as­pects of this coun­try’s op­er­a­tional sys­tems to the point that every­one so charged can be trust­ed to up­hold the law in its truest form. The need to elim­i­nate the bad eggs can­not be over-em­pha­sised. It is no se­cret, there are many be­fore the courts in sim­i­lar num­bers to that of the or­di­nary man. A re­vis­it of the re­cruit­ment process­es to fill the of­fices of those with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect and serve and a re­vis­it of the per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion sys­tems may re­quire a re­view and or strength­en­ing and thus con­sid­ered a good start­ing point.”

She al­so said while there ap­pears to be an im­prove­ment in the area of pro­grammes for the youth in T&T, the need for ed­u­cat­ing young peo­ple on the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion to their fu­ture growth and de­vel­op­ment ap­pears to re­quire ad­di­tion­al work.

“Many of our young peo­ple would have dropped out of school dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and oth­ers con­tin­ue to not see the need for school. Our so­cial ser­vices and those with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ed­u­ca­tion must get to­geth­er to fur­ther strength­en this area and to im­ple­ment strate­gies which may serve to guide our young peo­ple along a path of sta­bil­i­ty and progress.”

Hav­ing been in the field of ed­u­ca­tion for sev­er­al years, Joseph said she ful­ly un­der­stands that so­ci­ety will win some stu­dents and may lose some, and the coun­try may lose some adults and may win oth­ers.

“Nev­er­the­less, the goal is to keep try­ing to win them all so that we may min­imise the chal­lenges of to­day and make our twin-is­land state a bet­ter place.”

Strate­gic plan­ning

Joseph spoke specif­i­cal­ly about some of her plans for the TTC­SI.

“My aim is to fur­ther strength­en the gov­er­nance struc­tures, strate­gic plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment of a ro­bust pol­i­cy frame­work that will po­si­tion the TTC­SI as the leader in the Caribbean re­gion with the aim of tak­ing it to in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els in the fu­ture. From the mem­ber per­spec­tive – heav­ier fo­cus on con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes to sup­port SMEs in their thrust to de­vel­op and grow. Bud­get­ing, sim­ple busi­ness plans, set­ting up gov­er­nance sys­tems and poli­cies and an un­der­stand­ing of busi­ness man­age­ment will al­so be in the fore­front in the com­ing years. The small­er or­gan­i­sa­tions must be able to ad­vance their busi­ness fur­ther up the suc­cess lad­der while the al­ready es­tab­lished ones will be mo­ti­vat­ed to fur­ther strength­en what they do so that they can ad­e­quate­ly com­pete in the mar­ket in which they op­er­ate.”

She al­so said all TTC­SI’s projects cur­rent­ly in ef­fect will be sup­port­ed and it is her wish that there will be trade mis­sions, Gate­way to Trade Co­hort 2 and link­ing mem­bers to busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties glob­al­ly.

“Re­al time ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of all mem­bers will be height­ened and TTC­SI will re­main a voice on mat­ters of na­tion­al in­ter­est as well. The im­por­tance of these ini­tia­tives can­not be over-em­pha­sised giv­en the fact that the TTC­SI rep­re­sents 700,000 mem­bers, which is a sig­nif­i­cant foot­print in the coun­try.”

As the na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for the ser­vices sec­tor, Joseph con­sid­ers it im­por­tant to pro­mote net­work­ing and part­ner­ships with or­gan­i­sa­tions that have a sim­i­lar modus operan­di and ethos.

In the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment, she said this will bring val­ue-add in terms of lob­by­ing and ad­vo­ca­cy and ex­change of crit­i­cal da­ta.

“The Caribbean economies have for some time recog­nised the val­ue of work­ing to­geth­er and the need to im­prove in­te­gra­tion. For ex­am­ple, in­tra-re­gion­al trade and pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion can sup­port the re­gion’s small-sized economies and build greater re­silience. It can al­so en­hance bar­gain­ing pow­er on the glob­al scale. Com­ing to­geth­er will serve as a mo­ti­va­tion­al fac­tor to achieve peace, sta­bil­i­ty and wealth that are need­ed in most ju­ris­dic­tions and TTC­SI will aim to be among the lead­ers in this re­gard.”