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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Things that matter

by

22 days ago
20250129
Wesley Gibbings

Wesley Gibbings

With so much go­ing on, in­clud­ing the glob­al reach of tyran­ny, it be­comes dif­fi­cult to pin down in­di­vid­ual, ur­gent needs for pub­lic at­ten­tion em­ploy­ing the lim­it­ed space of a news­pa­per col­umn. But, as has in­creas­ing­ly be­come the case, life in T&T tugs you back on di­rect course … some­times quite bru­tal­ly.

For in­stance, an ear­ly morn­ing mes­sage from a rel­a­tive last Mon­day re­mind­ed me of the de­gree to which re­peat­ed po­lit­i­cal cam­paign claims can be dis­tanced from lived re­al­i­ties.

Phone in hand at 3 in the morn­ing, ly­ing on her side on the dry half of a nar­row urine-soaked hos­pi­tal gur­ney, she wrote painful­ly in bro­ken sen­tences: “Night­mare urine bag leak­ing on floor and bed. stom­ach bag nev­er changed, or any­one ask if I hun­gry.”

Yes, dear min­is­ter, “me­dia peo­ple” will see the bro­ken urine bag and wet bed long be­fore a fresh­ly paint­ed, re­con­struct­ed wall or build­ing. So, don’t hold your breath for apolo­gies or lengthy ex­pla­na­tions. Vig­i­lance casts wide, not nar­row eyes. We con­sid­er our­selves to have failed if an en­tire sto­ry has not been told —fresh walls and un­at­tend­ed bro­ken urine bags in­clud­ed.

The day be­fore that text, I was told by a chron­i­cal­ly and se­ri­ous­ly ill friend that she had been turned away from the A&E of the same pub­lic hos­pi­tal be­cause pri­or blood pres­sure read­ings, tak­en by an­oth­er state health in­sti­tu­tion of be­tween 208/134 and 214/147, weren’t high enough for ad­mis­sion and treat­ment.

These episodes are high­light­ed at the top of to­day’s dis­patch on­ly be­cause they con­sti­tute mat­ters of life and death. But the malaise ex­tends across the vast spec­trum of ser­vices over which there is both ad­min­is­tra­tive and po­lit­i­cal over­sight.

It is not that some things have not im­proved. For in­stance, the in­hu­man­i­ty of some of­fi­cial pro­ce­dures has been suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dressed with the help of dili­gent pub­lic ser­vants. Yet, there is so much that can be im­proved through the in­ter­ven­tion of po­lit­i­cal vi­sion aid­ed by ad­min­is­tra­tive com­pe­tence and com­mit­ment in the vast ma­jor­i­ty of oth­er ar­eas.

I am not go­ing to apol­o­gise for rais­ing the “dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion” sto­ry for the umpteenth time here. Fel­low me­dia cor­re­spon­dent, Mark Lyn­der­say, who is far more com­pe­tent and per­haps even more pas­sion­ate on the sub­ject than I, has said al­most every­thing about the enor­mous gap be­tween stat­ed in­ten­tion and cur­rent re­al­i­ty.

No, min­is­ter, at the cur­rent rate and un­der pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances, there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of leapfrog­ging in­to what, for many coun­tries, is al­ready the present but which, for us, re­mains the seem­ing­ly dis­tant fu­ture. And, yes, we know and un­der­stand the lim­i­ta­tions; not the least be­ing an un­en­thu­si­as­tic pub­lic ser­vice en­gine room. But what now pass­es as dig­i­tal gains are com­plete­ly unim­pres­sive mi­cro-steps.

I have, in this re­spect, de­vel­oped the bad, some­what self-de­struc­tive habit of tak­ing note of the work­ing en­vi­ron­ments of the bu­reau­crat­ic big-wigs—some of whom rem­i­nisce boast­ful­ly on the smell of pa­per and ink. The politi­cians awk­ward­ly and in­com­pe­tent­ly em­ploy­ing so­cial me­dia and AI as sup­posed im­age-en­hanc­ing aids. The pub­lic ser­vice process­es across three and four steps that can eas­i­ly and log­i­cal­ly be one.

Now, about that small pot­hole along the South­ern Main Road in Curepe op­po­site the bet­ting place. That one that has been caus­ing dri­vers to veer mar­gin­al­ly in­to on­com­ing traf­fic. I wrote about it ex­act­ly one year ago. It’s not a large or sig­nif­i­cant pot­hole. Noth­ing for an MP or lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor to rage over. A small one left be­hind years ago fol­low­ing what might have been the lay­ing of wa­ter pipes.

Some­body had clear­ly screwed up and an­oth­er de­clared: “leave dat so.” Be­cause “leave day jess so” is how we do busi­ness around here.

It has ap­par­ent­ly not been large enough for po­lit­i­cal points but has been used by peo­ple like me as an in­di­ca­tion of how things work in this place. One of these late nights or ear­ly morn­ings, we will read or hear about the car pro­ceed­ing north along the South­ern Main Road in Curepe whose dri­ver “lost con­trol” and ran in­to an on­com­ing ve­hi­cle with trag­ic re­sults.

So, to­day is not about glob­al threats to en­light­ened progress span­ning decades. It’s not about the cli­mate cri­sis up­on us. It’s not about elec­tion shenani­gans and bac­cha­nal. Nei­ther does it sound the usu­al alarms about de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­laps­es. It is about high blood pres­sure, urine on a hos­pi­tal gur­ney, idle dig­i­tal tools, and a small hole on the main road.

It’s about some of the many things that re­al­ly mat­ter at the end of the day.


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