THE EDITOR: Maybe I am too much of an "ordinary" guy to be able to understand when the highly-educated "thinkers" in society, or even our "supremely qualified" politicians, speak.
But to me no government which gives a population affordable healthcare, a regular supply of potable water, a stable electricity supply, access to good education, paved, drivable roads, and an ample supply of locally-grown, affordable foodstuff will ever be considered unelectable.
Instead, for decades we have been saddled with successive administrations which seemingly ignore these basic amenities and instead concentrate on:
* Constructing big buildings that usually end up tainted in some way and so cannot be used for anything.
* Road projects that take forever to complete and are always over-budget.
* Spending billions on substandard healthcare that causes people to wait weeks/months/years to get minor procedures done, and they are then forced to go to private institutions.
* Giving agricultural lands to farmers to grow produce but which end up housing rental properties on them.
* Spending billions to desalinate water when we could spend a one-time fee on constructing proper catchment areas.
* Commissioning countless feasibility studies on useless projects that cost millions and then gather dust.
* Sending a host of under-qualified public sector personnel to meetings (junkets) all over the world when they could be conducted over the internet.
* Sending missions to far-flung places ostensibly to seek out issues pertinent to the country's development, but which never amount to anything more than a paid joyride. And the list goes on.
The welfare of financiers and society elites always seem to come first, and so the basics I outline above – potable water, steady electrical supply, proper healthcare for the poor, maintaining roads, and affordable healthy foodstuffs grown locally – are never the issue.
Yet we keep voting in the same deck of cards each time, with only the colours of the suits changed.
I have no more tears left to shed for the country and for what we are leaving to our children. To paraphrase a local scholar, "Trinidad will soon become another Haiti...with oil."
DR ZEEFAH NIMA
Port of Spain
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