When quick relief was provided by the State

THE EDITOR: The Newsday’s December 1 editorial claims that both the current PNM and past People’s Partnership administrations treat with flooding as an exercise in public relations and one in which tone-deaf state agencies demonstrate a lack of accountability and an inability to bring quick relief to suffering citizens.

One would find it difficult to argue with your first premise – political parties do try to score cheap points in the aftermath of disasters, that is the nature of politics. Yellow raincoats, Wellington boots, designer sunglasses and dinghies are symbols of these attempts at winning hearts and minds.

However, the second premise (that state agencies are oblivious to the suffering of the people and do not bring relief quickly to citizens) can be challenged by the historical memory of citizens which only needs to go back one decade.

On August 11, 2012, over five dozen homes were cut off from the rest of the country in Gittensdale, Glencoe, after the bridge at the bottom of the hill was washed away by torrential overnight rain. My neighbours and I awoke that morning to find that a large section of La Horquette Valley Road, a stone’s throw from the office of the Member of Parliament for Diego Martin West, had also disappeared.

By midday, a large contingent of government officials, including the former prime minister and her entourage, were on the scene assessing the damage. Before dusk the next day, the bridge was replaced and the road repaired. Lives and livelihoods quickly returned to normal in our little enclave, which has never been unfaithful to the PNM.

While cynics may argue that this was nothing more than the PP administration seizing an opportunity to score points in its opponent’s territory, this state-sponsored alacrity could also have been because that government knew it had more to prove and less time to prove it.

Successive terms in office are only guaranteed to the incumbent party, but each new catastrophe reminds us that the PP government simply had better managers. I am sure those people in Bamboo No 2 would have been very happy to experience that level of state-sponsored alacrity last week.

So, while we may all agree that what we see is public relations in action, we must be objective enough to admit that the tone-deafness, stone-cold incompetence and glacial pace for relief are recent phenomena.

We need only ask ourselves one question. During which (almost weekly) flooding event have we seen the Prime Minister on the scene instructing and inspiring various arms of the State to provide immediate solutions to assist the lives and livelihoods of flood victims?

A AJIM

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