The coun­try wit­nessed how quick­ly the Prime Min­is­ter can move to change trou­ble­some pol­i­cy when he put his col­leagues on no­tice that he was mov­ing to amend leg­is­la­tion which would re­quire the Par­lia­ment to meet every time an of­fi­cer is re­quired to act as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the event the sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er is un­able to per­form his/her du­ties for what­ev­er rea­son.

The Low­er House de­bat­ed the mo­tion be­cause the Gov­ern­ment on­ly re­cent­ly no­ticed it was in breach of the law by al­low­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to ap­point short-term act­ing com­mis­sion­ers with­out Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval.

“I want mem­bers to un­der­stand that if it was for on­ly one day, the cur­rent law re­quires that this process be gone in­to. And of course, one would ask, sup­pose the Par­lia­ment was not meet­ing to­day; and sup­pose it was Christ­mas Eve, whether the Par­lia­ment would be called out in short no­tice to give par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for such a short pe­ri­od?” Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley posit­ed dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on the re­quest by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to ap­point Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to act for in­cum­bent CoP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, who is leav­ing the coun­try to­day on of­fi­cial busi­ness for a week.

Ar­gu­ing that this process was te­dious and cum­ber­some, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced he’d bring leg­is­la­tion to the House to “make a sen­si­ble amend­ment to al­low the Com­mis­sion to make short-term ap­point­ments.”

To bring the point home, the Prime Min­is­ter, see­ing that 41 mem­bers of the Low­er House would be in­con­ve­nienced by a less-than-ide­al pol­i­cy, is mak­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion that it be sort­ed out as soon as pos­si­ble.

Let’s com­pare that to the thou­sands of cit­i­zens in­con­ve­nienced by two poli­cies.

First, the pub­lic ser­vice dress code.

Hun­dreds of cit­i­zens over the years have com­plained about be­ing turned away from gov­ern­ment of­fices for the slight­est vi­o­la­tion of a dress code. Peo­ple try­ing to con­duct their busi­ness in these of­fices have been asked to rent socks, or use tape to cov­er holes in jeans. Just this week, a woman had to drape her­self in a cur­tain to cov­er her arms so she could con­duct busi­ness at the Trea­sury.

Con­tact­ed on the Trea­sury in­ci­dent, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West said the min­istry is cur­rent­ly look­ing at it “with a view to mak­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion.”

Mean­while, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine did away with the same ar­cha­ic pol­i­cy via a memo.

In the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter West al­so said “Gov­ern­ment can­not en­act change for the sake of change” or run “hel­ter-skel­ter” af­ter “shiny ob­jects.” The “shiny ob­ject” she was re­fer­ring to was the much-called-for work-from-home pol­i­cy. De­spite see­ing the pol­i­cy in ac­tion for two years, its faults and its tri­umphs, and ac­knowl­edg­ing how much pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is lost due to time spent in traf­fic on the T&T’s roads, Min­is­ter West still doesn’t seem con­vinced of its use­ful pur­pose.

So, the coun­try finds it­self again in analy­sis paral­y­sis. Years will be spent try­ing to fig­ure out the best way to im­ple­ment com­mon-sense poli­cies while thou­sands re­main in­con­ve­nienced, feel­ing un­heard and voice­less, pray­ing those in pow­er find it with­in them­selves to “make a sen­si­ble amend­ment” to every­day prob­lems.