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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Development–the issue at heart

by

20100321

At the core of the Prime Min­is­ter's re­cent "non-en­light­en­ing" speech, which was os­ten­si­bly sup­posed to clear the air on the Calder Hart con­cerns, was an as­ser­tion that the gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment plans will not be de­railed. As far as he is con­cerned Hart and Ude­cott are just pawns in a bat­tle be­ing waged about de­vel­op­ment, and the course such de­vel­op­ment takes. And the Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect; I sin­cere­ly hope the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion al­so sees the events in such light. Make no mis­take; what may or may not have oc­curred at Ude­cott is very im­por­tant. How­ev­er as a peo­ple we should not lose sight of the core is­sue(s). Over the past eight years while the PNM's idea of de­vel­op­ment has giv­en us mul­ti­ple large con­struc­tion projects, very few, if any, hav­ing an eco­nom­ic ra­tio­nale. Out­side of pos­si­bly the Hy­att, I can­not think of any of the projects that can pay for them­selves, ei­ther di­rect­ly of in­di­rect­ly.

If fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies were done they sure­ly haven't been shared with the pub­lic. To make mat­ters worse, un­der­tak­ings that could have a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic (and so­cial) im­pact have been ig­nored. For ex­am­ple a dam at Ca­paro would not on­ly elim­i­nate flood­ing in that area, but al­so pro­vide a source of wa­ter that will be much cheap­er than en­er­gy hun­gry, main­te­nance heavy, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing and cost­ly de­sali­na­tion plants. Pro­cess­ing of waste wa­ter that could be used in­stead of potable wa­ter for in­dus­try and farm­ing has al­so been large­ly ne­glect­ed. Let's look at the soon to be re­fur­bished acad­e­my for per­form­ing arts. There have been no rev­enue gen­er­at­ing events at this large and pricey build­ing, not to men­tion the cost to po­ten­tial pa­trons to make this build­ing self sus­tain­ing would be pro­hib­i­tive.

Yet a fa­cil­i­ty that of­fers a home for Car­ni­val and space for large so­cial, en­ter­tain­ment and cul­tur­al events that can gen­er­ate con­sis­tent rev­enue on­ly ex­ist on pa­per. Over a bil­lion dol­lars have been spent on sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, the lat­est be­ing a goat rac­ing fa­cil­i­ty, yes folks that's right, a place for goats to run on East­er Tues­day. These sport­ing are­nas are se­vere­ly un­der­utilised, and even more so now that they are off-lim­its for en­ter­tain­ment pur­pos­es. At the same time we have the spec­ta­cle of sick per­sons ly­ing on cold con­crete in an­cient hos­pi­tals. I could go on about the emp­ty tow­ers on the wa­ter­front while crime con­tin­ues un­abat­ed.

The many mil­lions spent on sum­mits while sick chil­dren die wait­ing on mon­ey for life sav­ing op­er­a­tions. The mil­lion dol­lar flag that lit­er­al­ly flies in our faces, while we sit for hours in traf­fic jams. The bil­lions spent on yet to be jus­ti­fied bailouts, while pover­ty is still rife in a coun­try rich­ly blessed with nat­ur­al and hu­man re­sources... Yes, at the heart of these is­sues is de­vel­op­ment, the kind that is need­ed should ben­e­fit the many in­stead of the few, es­pe­cial­ly as it is be­ing done with our tax dol­lars along with loans that our chil­dren will have to re­pay.

Michael Wal­cott

Via e-mail


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