THE EDITOR: I recently retired from my job after being employed for 39 years at various levels ranging from machine operator to Floor Supervisor. During my tenure with my employers I’ve managed to acquire a home for my family, and send four children to school. My parents taught us to be conservative and to spend wisely.
To keep myself from being bored by inactivity, upon being goaded by others, I opted to spend a one-week vacation in St Lucia with my wife.
Besides being exposed to the natural beauty and different scenery, two things stood out which really have us contemplating whether we in Trinidad and Tobago were being short-changed by our leaders.
One can only marvel at the quality of workmanship on the roads. I could swear that my rental car was gliding on oil. Please, someone with some clout, genuine concern, or even hard-to-find integrity, let’s get proper training for our road contractors. Sad to say that I’ve always voted the PNM, but now I feel soiled, used, abused.
There now, upon returning home on the right turn off into San Fernando at the end of the Uriah Butler Highway, the most horrendous quarter-mile of road re-paving greeted us. Pray, I ask, who in 20-20s name did this?
This is what my PNM has been doing to us all these years. And we in the south love it. I’ve heard but now that I’ve travelled, I’ve seen. We are being gypped. Instead of going to the US and UK, we should visit the islands and look at the quality of life there. Then we would change our perspective of our “leaders.” These people are not as financially well-endowed as us, but their astute management and respect for their monetary resources are far superior to what we have been fed here.
As if adding insult to injury, on the radio newscast of May 27, I heard that the Ministry of Agriculture had secured a contract from Europe to supply four tonnes of hot peppers, half red and half yellow, per week. You heard right: per week! Did I hear someone acknowledge that the St Lucian Agriculture Ministry actually works?
Do you know that with limited resources, there are no national housing “schemes”, and yet you seldom see any shanties? My black brothers and sisters all take particular pride in owning decent, habitable houses, all of which are very well kept and habitable. Here in sweet TT, our people have been reduced to political dependency. People get up, stand up. We are being trampled on.
Oropouche
17 Jun 2009
PNM country 2
