I write in re­sponse to re­cent news items un­fair­ly sul­ly­ing the work of Con­sul gen­er­al Nan Ram­goolam in New York. Nan Ram­goolam is the best CG T&T has ever had in the city and I urge the PM to keep her here to fur­ther trans­form the of­fice. This al­liance group of pa­per or­gan­i­sa­tions could not be se­ri­ous in their com­plaint. By tak­ing note of their griev­ances and the groups they com­plain to in Trinidad, one can fig­ure out their agen­da and the un­der­tone of their let­ter.

I am won­der­ing if the group is mix­ing up our CG of­fice with that of pre­vi­ous years when ser­vice was vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent and the of­fice was ter­ri­bly and in­com­pe­tent­ly man­aged by an 'old boys' net­work. This is the best CG we have had in New York since a Con­sular Of­fice was es­tab­lished more than 40 ago. The com­plainants are not hon­est and truth­ful about why they were ter­mi­nat­ed.

And con­trary to what the com­plainants stat­ed, the of­fice is func­tion­ing very smooth­ly and prop­er­ly. Those seek­ing ser­vice are not com­plain­ing-on­ly those who were ter­mi­nat­ed for fail­ing to per­form their job are. They had easy work and lost their en­ti­tle­ments for prac­ti­cal­ly do­ing noth­ing. So ob­vi­ous­ly, they want back their no (or lit­tle) work job based on, among oth­er things, years at the job, not on per­for­mance and com­pe­tence.

The me­dia should vis­it the of­fice and in­ter­view peo­ple who came for ser­vice be­fore Ms Ram­goolam's tenure and the in­quire about the ef­fi­cien­cy of op­er­a­tions now. I have spo­ken with many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans over the last year about ser­vice at the Con­sulate. They all rate the ser­vice as ex­cep­tion­al or great and a mod­el for oth­er of­fices over­seas as well as gov­ern­ment of­fices at home.

For the first time un­der Ms Ram­goolam's tenure, ser­vice is be­ing pro­vid­ed ef­fi­cient­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Peo­ple are at­tend­ed to prompt­ly. They no longer have to wait weeks and months and be told to come back every so of­ten for a sim­ple ser­vice. Their needs are ad­dressed right away in a one-stop shop. They don't have to make re­turn vis­its for ser­vice and the few peo­ple that make up the al­liance knows this as fact.

If one talks to peo­ple, it will be found that be­fore Ms Ram­goolam took charge last year, the of­fice at­tend­ed to a max­i­mum 50 clients per day us­ing a num­ber sys­tem. If you were not among the 50, you had to re­turn an­oth­er day.

To­day, the of­fice sees hun­dreds of peo­ple dai­ly and no one is turned away. Pass­port re­newals no longer take years. Peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly an­swer the phone un­der Ms Ram­goolam as op­posed to what oc­curred un­der her pre­de­ces­sors when one had to be lucky to have a staff mem­ber ac­tu­al­ly an­swered the phone.

So con­trary to what the group com­plained, there is noth­ing im­prop­er about the func­tion­ing of the of­fice. The group stat­ed that peo­ple were un­fair­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. How so? They failed an ex­am to de­ter­mine their suit­abil­i­ty for the post. Em­ploy­ees are not com­pe­tent and adept at what they did. It is not 'job for the boys' or girls any more, or based on par­ty con­nec­tions. It is based on mer­it and com­pe­ten­cy. Peo­ple hired based on pass­ing an ex­am.

Race or par­ty con­nec­tion was not a fac­tor in hir­ing. Those ter­mi­nat­ed were giv­en the pink slip be­cause of in­com­pe­tence and lack of le­git­i­mate em­ploy­ment sta­tus in Amer­i­ca. When one went to the of­fice for ser­vice, they treat­ed peo­ple with scorn, con­tempt and dis­re­spect. They be­haved un­pro­fes­sion­al­ly so they were right­ly ter­mi­nat­ed and this should have hap­pened way back.

The CG took the right ac­tion. It is about time some­one took ac­tion against the lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude of staff. And con­trary to what the com­plainants stat­ed, the of­fice is run­ning smooth­ly. I ap­plaud the PM for send­ing Ms Ram­goolam to stream­line the New York of­fice and to put it on a path to ef­fi­cien­cy and ter­rif­ic ser­vice.

May I point out that Ms Ram­goolam is well liked by Trin­bag­on­ian com­mu­ni­ties all over the North­east US for which she has ju­ris­dic­tion. She trav­els around to meet Trin­bag­on­ian groups every­where. I see her at so many func­tions in Brook­lyn and Queens and has been very ac­com­mo­dat­ing to our di­verse di­as­po­ra. My com­plaint is why was she sent to New York ear­li­er to clean up the mess of ear­li­er years.

An­gela Williams