Tobago’s plight

IT IS MOST unsatisfactory that problems with accessing basic services of the Registrar General’s Department have erupted yet again in Tobago.

On November 27, Chief Secretary Farley Augustine held a media conference to once more raise the issue, which goes back over a year.

He said processes relating to certificates, deeds, online records and clearances were again beset with delays.

It was a sequel to a similar complaint last October when an office was closed because of a reported lockout from an online system.

But further, citing fresh complaints made by the Tobago Law Association in correspondence dated November 4, Mr Augustine spoke of inadequate staffing and a lack of consultation on new legislation.

“It feels as if Tobago was taken back in time by a central government who just does not care,” he said.

However, one day later the Prime Minister denied this at a Whitehall briefing.

“There has been no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to do any such thing,” said Dr Rowley.

He announced that Attorney General Reginald Armour had been mandated to intervene in the situation for the second time in a year.

The PM described that situation as one relating to “personalities and the interpretation of the law,” not any “policy position on the part of the government.”

Whatever the cause of the situation, it is unacceptable.

And the PM’s reassurance that the issue is simply about how laws are being interpreted means that the matter won’t be solved by just another memo from the AG.

The timing of this impasse couldn’t be worse, especially with pending elections in both Trinidad and Tobago, a crime surge and the ongoing debate surrounding autonomy.

Mr Augustine has already seized on the problems as yet more evidence of Tobago being treated like a colony.

Yet, this issue, involving a department responsible for issuing birth and death certificates, is relevant not only to Tobagonians, but to the entire country.

It is a fine example of the ineptitude experienced in both islands in the public service.

Just this month, there was another classic example of this ineptitude.

On November 7, Fyzabad teacher Marlena Mohan’s decade-old grievance with the Teaching Service Commission and Ministry of Education finally ended.

A legal claim brought by Ms Mohan had painted a picture of “maladministration and chaos” between both offices, characterised by ineffectual communication, errors, and wastage of time relating to the simple issue of reassessing qualifications.

Ultimately, what Mr Augustine has highlighted is really another reason why all citizens of the unitary state of Trinidad and Tobago need, and rightly demand: public service reform.