Are we living in a lawless dump?

When I was around six, my single-parent mother made me kneel and pray every night before going to bed. She was young and poor but religious.

She also taught me that a house, even a small one-room apartment, can be poor but still clean and orderly. I couldn’t leave things unclean or untidy. She wanted the house to be a home, too. It was her struggle for order and cleanliness.

My mind went back that far when I recently read several published letters complaining about the disorderly ground-level conditions of our society. The “never-give-up” activist Steve Alvarez stated: “We are living in a dump. Have you ever gone to someone’s house and wondered how they seem so comfortable living in an environment that seems very dirty and unhealthy to you?”

I have been seeing garbage heaps piled up along highways, and worse, in back streets, and remaining there for days.

But it is not only about rubbish. About one month ago, former minister of health Dr Fuad Khan, like Senator Phillip Alexander, loudly complained about the upsetting disorder at Maracas Beach. He complained how people go there expecting a day of peace and comfort, only to be hassled and discomfited by hustlers pressing you to rent seats and lounge chairs for a fee.

It was bullying. It looked as though if you refused, you might be in danger. I experienced that early this year, promising never to go back.

But there is more. And the tourists are sitting ducks. It’s almost like a “beach invasion.” Can this be stopped within the next two weeks? Let’s see.

Dexter Rigsby’s letter of complaint was headlined: “Regulate aggressive beach rentals at Maracas.” “No sooner had I arrived at the carpark and exited my car than the bombardment began.”

Mr Rigsby added that as “a pole was erected just inches behind our backs, I asked the worker if he had any care for others, but he shrugged (it) off.”

Mr Rigsby called for proper regulation and enforced controls – which is another problem in this country.

Some citizens boast that Maracas Beach is “one of the best in the Caribbean.” If so, why does it look so disorderly, from parking, vending, crossing the road and potholes with puddles of water? Check the bathrooms, too.

Many of us are fortunate enough to have experienced what a popular beach abroad looks like – from facilities and sanitation to orderliness and safety.

So much money is spent on tourism agencies and overseas marketing, but nowhere is very attractive or safe here for local or foreign tourism. Like the rubbish epidemic, if disorderly situations like Maracas Bay are not properly corrected, they will get worse.

Part of our growing public disorder is that many young people, especially boys, are the culprits, whether it’s at Maracas Bay, pelting bottles and fast-food boxes from moving vehicles or leaving their rubbish behind at rivers and other beaches. Didn’t their mothers teach them?

You know, in my day primary schoolchildren had to clean and sweep up their classrooms and even the schoolyard. They cared for their school. But today it seems as if we don’t even care for our country. We feel money is the answer.

Our national tragedy is that one government after another has allowed the lawlessness and roadside rubbish to continue, partly to avoid losing votes and partly through their irresponsible failure to implement the Regional Corporation Act.

The first call now is for the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, the Hon Khadijah Ameen, to demonstrate she can do much better than Faris Al-Rawi and Kazim Hosein. It is an urgent matter of political leadership. While cleaning up CEPEP and URP “corruption” and their misguided objectives are necessary, other ground-level problems are getting worse.

What were the municipal police doing all these years? Same thing with the country’s pothole epidemic. True, the government has only had 100 days in office, but the population is looking at ministers like the energetic Minister of Works and Infrastructure, Jearlean John.

Referring to Kalissa Danclair’s fatal accidentaldrowning, Linda Capildeo pushed further last week: “You will never find proper lighting, warnings and guardrails in roads and bridges in areas that don’t support the PNM, like it or not.”

The government’s neglecting to have street signs properly installed across the country, allowing false number plates, private cars used as “rented” cars, private cars as taxis – all this tells the law-abiding population what a lawless dump we have become.

And I remember my mother’s instructions.