It’s the start of 2021 and as this new year dawns our wish is for peace and pros­per­i­ty to all. Com­ing out of a most ab­nor­mal 2020 one can on­ly hope that 2021 would see a sem­blance of a re­turn to nor­mal­cy in the way we con­duct our dai­ly af­fairs.

For al­most 10 months in 2020, Trinidad and To­ba­go like the rest of the world was in lock­down. Schools were closed, busi­ness­es were shut, thou­sands lost jobs, bil­lions were spent pro­vid­ing so­cial ser­vices se­cu­ri­ty nets, but yet many who des­per­ate­ly need­ed help failed to get even the small amount promised to them.

As hunger and des­per­a­tion grew, many fam­i­lies fell apart. Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence was at its worse, not on­ly af­fect­ing wives and moth­ers but young girls. Sev­er­al fa­thers and grand­fa­thers are now be­fore the courts for sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing their young daugh­ters or grand­daugh­ters.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic saw many young chil­dren left be­hind in their ed­u­ca­tion for lack of de­vices for on­line class­es and in some com­mu­ni­ties, the lack of elec­tric­i­ty im­pact­ed their par­tic­i­pa­tion.

COVID-19 was in more ways than one a wake-up call for this coun­try. For years T&T had ben­e­fit­ed from the largesse of oil and gas and took a lot for grant­ed, pay­ing lit­tle at­ten­tion to the un­der­bel­ly of pover­ty and hope­less­ness that grip many com­mu­ni­ties.

In the past two years, tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens were thrown on the bread­line cre­at­ing a new poor. This is re­flect­ed in the grow­ing num­ber of home­less peo­ple on the streets across the coun­try.

2021 must bring with it a new sense of hope that those who run the coun­try will take cog­ni­sance of the myr­i­ad of prob­lems which have been brought to the fore in the past 10 months.

Com­ing out of an ab­nor­mal year, 2021 must be busi­ness un­usu­al where the fo­cus must shift from do­ing things the same old way, to how T&T can ad­vance be­yond oil and gas.

We have the where­with­al, the peo­ple, and what it takes. It is the politi­cians who must take the lead.

2021 is a good start­ing point for fo­cus on those who re­al­ly need help, to deal with the prob­lems that con­front us, to en­sure that no child is left be­hind, to en­sure the most vul­ner­a­ble find a space and are giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to make valid con­tri­bu­tions.

Good gov­er­nance is re­quired now.

The gov­ern­ment is re­quired to do all in its pow­er to make things right and to fix the many prob­lems that plague T&T.

All good busi­ness­es for­mu­late strate­gic plans to be­gin the new year. We can on­ly hope that the gov­ern­ment would have for­mu­lat­ed a strate­gic plan that will get T&T through a year that may well be a con­tin­u­a­tion of what we faced in 2020. But for all of us, 2021 must be one of hope—a year when the lessons of 2020 are not just mem­o­ries but plat­forms for the change re­quired if T&T is to re­turn to a place of suc­cess and pros­per­i­ty.

Hap­py New Year!