Pri­or Be­har­ry

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says Trinidad and To­ba­go is ma­tur­ing with the elec­tion of the first woman as prime min­is­ter. In his ad­dress at the open­ing of the First Ses­sion of the Tenth Par­lia­ment, yes­ter­day, Richards said: "It is the first time in the his­to­ry of our na­tion that we have at the helm of gov­ern­ment, a woman, a fact which mer­its ap­plause for the many things that it con­notes. "Let us see this for what it is; ev­i­dence of the process of ma­tur­ing that has been tak­ing place." Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Siparia MP, was among 41 MPs in the Low­er House who took the oath of al­liance, yes­ter­day. She is the first fe­male prime min­is­ter of T&T.

Richards said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­point­ment was "not hap­pen­stance or some­thing that has oc­curred by chance." "It strikes me that the re­wards of em­brac­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for ed­u­ca­tion, in its broad­est sense, as well as gain­ing rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence in the var­i­ous av­enues of na­tion­al life are ev­i­dent, and the women of this coun­try ought to be keen­ly aware of the sig­nals that are be­ing sent," he said. "A more gen­tle, car­ing so­ci­ety, yes, but there must be no room what­ev­er for pa­tron­age." He said the coun­try was now wit­ness­ing a hand­ing-over process and told Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley that the "pro­fes­sion­al pub­lic ser­vants, rep­re­sent­ing a con­tin­u­um and ded­i­cat­ed to the wel­fare of our coun­try, are there to help you."

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Richards said pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was al­so rel­e­vant in the con­text of world com­pet­i­tive­ness. He said: "As I men­tioned, not long ago, we have slipped from 42nd place on the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex in 2002/2003 to 86th in 2009/2010–out of 133 coun­tries." Richards said pro­duc­tiv­i­ty does not sud­den­ly oc­cur in a vac­u­um. "It is a cul­ture and a way of life that must be nur­tured," he said. "While lead­er­ship in the labour move­ment, un­der­stand­ably, ne­go­ti­ates to se­cure the best com­pen­sa­tion for the coun­try's or­gan­ised labour, from which oth­ers may ben­e­fit, even so, much greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty than is now the case must be re­quired of the work force. This is not ap­plic­a­ble on­ly in the for­mal sec­tor, but across the board."

Hous­ing

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to take the lead in the pro­vi­sion of cer­tain ba­sic ser­vices as health care, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty roads and trans­port. "Hous­ing is an­oth­er area in which an ag­gres­sive pol­i­cy must be pur­sued," Richards said. He al­so called on the pri­vate sec­tor to con­tin­ue to play its role recog­nis­ing "that the mar­ket is way be­yond the reach of the work­ing and mid­dle class­es and col­lab­o­rate in do­ing some­thing about it, in or­der to pull back the work­ing poor from home­less­ness. "Make no mis­take about it, the work­ing poor are a re­al­i­ty, but they are not as recog­nis­able as the in­di­gent among us and so, their plight can eas­i­ly be ig­nored, while oth­ers take cen­tre stage," the Pres­i­dent said. He said not enough at­ten­tion was paid to the in­for­mal sec­tor.

"And so, our peo­ple have for­got­ten the sewing ma­chines, the bak­ers' ovens, the home-made hot pep­per sauce and con­fec­tionery, to name just a few items of the cot­tage in­dus­try, which have some­times pro­vid­ed the means nec­es­sary to pro­duce the next gen­er­a­tion of high­ly-qual­i­fied and dis­tin­guished per­sons," he said. Richards said flexi-time will not as­sist with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, "if beat­ing the traf­fic re­sults on­ly in work­ers hav­ing break­fast on the job, in­stead of at home, there­by cut­ting down the eight-hour work day to sev­en, if not less." He said the cur­rent lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was not ac­cept­able. Richards said the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my must take place now as "our heavy de­pen­dence on the oil and gas sec­tor, with its in­her­ent vi­cis­si­tudes, can­not con­tin­ue." He said: "The time has long since come for us to har­ness and em­ploy al­ter­na­tive sources of en­er­gy..."