Shifting blame for country's problems

THE EDITOR: “Delegate all the authority, shift all the blame and take all the credit” was the advice given to me by an old sage at the Oval bar in 1973.

Obviously, I did not take this advice to heart in my very lukewarm business career to date.

However, this and every other Government TT has had the misfortune to be shouldered with has operated strictly on the above stated premise.

Take the recent flooding in Port of Spain and other areas. Both the Minister of Works and the Port of Spain mayor blamed poor disposal of garbage and the excess volume of water running from the Northern Range, largely caused by the indiscriminate slashing and burning of the hills.

Now, obviously it does not seem plausible to these two gentlemen that some real concrete action should be taken to stop these lawless practices. I would imagine that this is because if they are unable to get the police to take serious action on violent crime and murder, then poor garbage disposal practices along with rampant slashing and burning of the hillsides will have to take a definite backseat.

Yet, we delude ourselves into thinking that we can ever build a viable tourism product in an environment riddled with litter and crime.

I’m sorry to say that after 42 years of writing letters to the newspapers on matters that are inevitably left to fester, that this country is doomed to a state of never-ending chaos, crime and confusion, mainly because we spend a lot of time writing and enacting new legislation and then make little or no effort to enforce any of these said-same laws.

GREGORY WIGHT, Maraval

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"Shifting blame for country's problems"

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