Repairing Trinidad and Tobago no easy task

THE EDITOR: The discoloured walls with vines, the broken windows and rusting machinery with chimneys falling apart tell a story of a once busy sugar factory.

The rusted tanks, discarded pipelines and rusting machinery paint a sad picture of what was once a vibrant oil refinery.

The looted buildings with broken conveyor belts and now cover for gangs with guns once housed a citrus factory on the base of the Laventille hills.

The unique feat of engineering where pipes and valves thread through the Northern Range to refill the Hollis Reservoir during the dry season are now abandoned forever.

Our fields that were once planted with sugar cane, citrus, peas, coconuts, rice, cocoa and coffee are now abandoned with grass and squatter communities.

Our forests with their majestic trees are being cut daily and sold for lumber, without control as the environment suffers.

Our young people at very early stages of their lives are subject to music with lyrics that support violence, praise alcoholism and drugs and consist of the most profane language.

There are rich public officers who consider it the norm to seek financial inducements before doing their duty.

Getting justice takes years, the law is disregarded and squatting in full view of officials, like that currently ongoing on the Lady Young Road, goes unchecked.

There are no attempts to regularise legal landowners as cases are extremely expensive and time-consuming.

Police patrols in communities are rear, and residents are urged by authorities to form watch groups to defend themselves against a rise in home invasions.

Simple things like registering births and deaths are time-consuming and burdensome.

Fire stations are without critical firefighting equipment.

Police and other public vehicles are poorly maintained and simply discarded in open yards after a few years of use. No attempt is made to sell them or have them repaired until they have been left to rot for years.

Our schools are becoming places for violent groups to roam, for children to be introduced to marijuana and for other illegal activities rather than a place for education and a disciplined approach to the trades and sports.

Where are the next set of engineers, doctors, financial professionals, lawyers and world class sportsmen and women to come from? In what environment?

When would there be order in the society where those employed to upkeep the law no longer take financial inducements to close their eyes to lawlessness?

Fixing TT is no one-man job. It requires every citizen, every community, every religious body, every social grouping to participate in the repair.

That requires turning away from racial and sectarian voting patterns and electing the best people committed to the humongous task of rebuilding TT. It calls for us to renew our hope for a better country.

We have the personnel, skills, equipment and knowledge to fix our homeland. We need the political will.

STEVE ALVAREZ

via e-mail