Geisha Kow­lessar

Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma), has iden­ti­fied the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice as just one of the in­sti­tu­tions which has reached cri­sis pro­por­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Aboud, oth­er in­sti­tu­tions like the health care sys­tem had al­so left a lot to be de­sired. Aboud was speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a stake­hold­ers meet­ing with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Sec­re­tari­at at Queen Street, Port-of-Spain. "The teach­ing ser­vice has failed to mo­ti­vate teach­ers to at­tend class­es. How do you mo­ti­vate health care providers? Aboud asked. At the be­gin­ning of the dis­cus­sion, Aboud ex­pressed con­cern that such a meet­ing, like many oth­ers he has at­tend­ed, at­tempt­ed to "pa­tro­n­ise" mem­bers of his or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"We have de­vot­ed hun­dreds and thou­sands of man hours to at­tend these meet­ings and we have found that over the past years we have been in­vit­ed to con­sul­ta­tions in which we just feel pa­tro­n­ised," Aboud said. He claimed that "ef­fort was be­ing made" to host such meet­ing to paint a pic­ture that "things are dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment and try­ing to do good for the coun­try is a very steep hill to climb. "We have not­ed a steadi­ly wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. There is a lot of back­room talk about who is to blame," Aboud said. Say­ing the sense of hope­less­ness had "set in like a virus" in T&T, Aboud said the great­est sin­gle de­ter­rent to a man com­mit­ting a crime was the fear of be­ing caught. And crim­i­nals, he added, pos­sessed no such fear. He said: "The sense of hope­less­ness is more se­ri­ous than the swine flu virus.

"Com­mu­ni­ca­tions have now be­come a big thing in Gov­ern­ment which puts a very pret­ty colour on a very mean­ing­less book," Aboud voiced. Ex­press­ing pes­simism about Gov­ern­ment's vi­sion of "2020" Aboud said he be­lieved it was not go­ing to oc­cur "with­in a sliv­er of time." He added: "We are 50 years away from de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus. The prin­ci­ple man­age­ment sys­tem that has failed us is per­for­mance man­age­ment." He lament­ed the sit­u­a­tion of hard-work­ing and ded­i­cat­ed po­lice of­fi­cers who still held ju­nior po­si­tions. "And we have some big fat guys who could put down two plates of pelau and read three news­pa­pers through­out the day and they are se­nior of­fi­cers," Aboud charged.