NEANDERTHAL THINKING

 It is difficult, if not impossible, to be happy about the direction that Trinidad & Tobago seems to be heading these days. Some wag suggested to me that the Government's thinking seemed to come straight out of the playbook from the Neanderthals - the close cousins of ours who went extinct so many thousands of years ago. Certainly, I understood his point. For example, while the Government and our erstwhile Minister of Health beat their respective chests about how well they have managed the COVID-19 crisis there is a worrying (and lingering) suspicion that we haven't been told the truth. There has been a dearth of testing for the virus. It was reported, for example, that little Grenada with approximately five percent of our population had actually done more tests than we had.  But we are supposed to have done a good job! Really? How do we know? We don't have all the facts.

Then there was this business about getting 200,000 vaccines from the African Union. Why does one get the uncomfortable impression that this was made out to be a big deal because India has been in the news about providing vaccines to poorer nations? In other words, it is all about race! Oh! Those who defend the Government will say that this is simply not true. But the suspicion persists. Why? Is this a case of where there is smoke there is fire?

There is the matter of a recently appointed Government Minister releasing a report about WASA saying what we all knew already: that this State entity was hopelessly and helplessly overstaffed, needed a radical overhaul and had too many 'managers'. Put another way, it is completely inefficient.

And then there is the rather curious (not to mention offensive) behaviour of the presiding officers in both Houses of Parliament who give the (obviously unintended) impression that they are completely biased and whose rulings call into question constantly their so-called independence.

But the 'Granddaddy' of all our problems begins and ends with the economy and the Government's handling of it. There was the rather sudden closure of Petrotrin shortly after serious reports of alleged corruption on the part of a contractor whose principal was alleged to have been a close friend of the Prime Minister. It is interesting that this allegation (of corrupt practices) seems to have all but disappeared. We have had closure after closure of plants at Point Lisas with thousands being thrown out of work. The Heritage and Stabilization fund is reported to being depleted on what feels like a daily basis and foreign exchange is now in such short supply that for the first time in almost thirty years there is a thriving black market in that commodity. The banks continue to make money though, and there is reportedly a lot of excess liquidity in the system. But business is bad.

There are whispers of reports that many economists are saying that if we don't take action soon then we will be forced to turn to the IMF. But it is noticeable that there is no denial of these whispers from either the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister.

In the meantime prices, especially of food, are rising. And there is talk of reducing the number of public servants! If that happens will social unrest be far behind? So far the bulk of the unemployment has been in the South of Trinidad. And most of the recently unemployed persons have received severance packages thus cushioning the blow. Right now there are many public servants who only report for work on a one week on one week off basis, but they continue to draw a full month's pay. How long can this continue.

No. We are stuck with what my friend calls 'Neanderthal thinking'. But the Neanderthals went extinct and the Homo Sapiens took over.  The rest is history. Makes you wonder where we'll all end up if this kind of thinking continues to dominate.