THE LOST GENERATIONS


Nobody can look at the state of our country and be happy. Everything seems to be falling apart. The recent Petrotrin oil spills, the soaring crime/murder rate, the drug busts with no "Mr. Big's" being caught ... the list goes on. Critics of the present Government like to say that it is all the Government's fault, but this simply can't be true. For example, assuming (though certainly not accepting) that the OWTU report on the oil spills is accurate, especially about the part where there was an October 2010 report that the offending pipeline was rotten and in dire need of repair, this would mean that the then PNM administration under Malcolm Jones of Petrotrin had not done the necessary maintenance. This does not take away blame from the Gillette administration of Petrotrin but adds to the list of those who ought to be blamed ... if the OWTU report is true!

In other words, if we take all the criticisms of the present administration as being the gospel truth we can easily find that these criticisms all apply (mutatis mutandis) to the last administration as well. Am I saying that this is all right then? Not at all! In fact, what I am trying to say is that I am not particularly interested in allocating blame to anybody. What I am trying to say is that we should spend a lot more time looking for solutions rather than saying "it's your fault" ... whoever "you" might happen to be.

I also realize that the problems in the country are generational. In other words, to a very large extent there is no hope of changing attitudes now for the present generation, much less the one immediately preceding. It might even be too late for the next generation coming up. But it is certainly not too late for the one after that.

Let me give you an example of what I mean: I have two daughters who are married and live in Australia. Daughter no.1 has two children and Daughter no. 2 has one. To make a long story very short my wife, our two sons and I made the long trek to Australia for Christmas to see my children and grandchildren ... and, yes, thank you, we had a great time. But the point here is that one day we were all having lunch in a very casual restaurant (something along the lines of, say, our TGI Fridays or Trotters) and I heard the manageress say to one of the waitresses in the softest of tones "Cynthia, if you don't want to be nice to the customers you can leave. You don't have to stay."  In other words, behave yourself, be polite or get out. The waitress immediately apologized and assured her boss that she would be nice. 'Service' is an important and very key word 'down under'. And it works! The country runs ... and runs well! I could not imagine those words being said here, much less the offending waiter/waitress scurrying off to change his/her attitude immediately. What I would expect here is an increased amount of surliness and downright rudeness.
 I don't have to tell you what kind of "service" we all have to put up with on a daily basis.'Service' in this country is a dirty word.  But why? What has gone wrong? Why don't we work? Why do we accept it with a shrug and say "well, this is Trinidad (or Tobago)?"  Seriously, why?

The problems that we have cannot be fixed overnight. They will take at least one generation to fix. Attitudes have to be changed.  And we have to start in the schools with the very young ones and come up. We have to start giving our young children the tools that they will need to become useful and productive citizens. Right now we are not doing that and the result is that a lot of very bright young people are being born into situations where there is no way out except through joining a gang and living a life of crime. If we continue to bury our heads in the sand the situation will only get worse ... and believe me, it can get worse than this. Try going over to Caracas right now and see what a real crime rate is like!!

But we can stop it. Honestly, we really can. But we need to start thinking differently. I think that the present National Security Minister seems to have his head screwed on right and seems to know what he is talking about. But he is like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam.The pressure building up behind his efforts is enormous and his task is not dissimilar to that of Hercules who had to clean out the Augean stables. And good as he is, I don't think that there exists any person in this country (or anywhere else for that matter) who has the powers of the mythical Hercules.

It is either that we start to think "out of the box" or we give up, declare a dictatorship, put all the criminals against a wall and shoot them. That will certainly fix the crime problem. Whether we will be happy with the other problems and the consequences that such a course of action would create is, of course, a whole other story!