JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The Day of Reckoning is not too far off

by

Curtis Williams
1399 days ago
20210519

As the last two weeks have passed and the num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly and sad­ly with it the deaths of na­tion­als, peo­ple ap­pear to be sur­prised by what is hap­pen­ing. Of­ten, the dai­ly ques­tion af­ter the num­bers are re­leased, is how did this hap­pen? Well, this hap­pened be­cause this is T&T.

Of course, it is easy to blame the Prime Min­is­ter for en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to go to To­ba­go in their thou­sands, but still tell them to be­have them­selves, as a par­ent would tell a child. But to blame Dr Kei­th Row­ley is to refuse to ac­cept that, as a peo­ple, we have not shown the char­ac­ter to do the hard things and the dis­ci­plined things.

We have to ad­mit that per­haps this con­stant need to phys­i­cal­ly dis­tance, avoid lim­ing, ad­here to the pro­to­cols and not en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate the il­le­gal en­try of non-na­tion­als were per­haps be­yond us. Be­yond a peo­ple who like to take it to the edge, hop­ing we don’t fall off the cliff.

So we thought that COVID-19 may cause some dis­com­fort, some peo­ple who were old and had co-mor­bidi­ties may not have made it. How­ev­er, we ap­par­ent­ly al­so weighed this with the fact that we had an en­tire par­al­lel health­care sys­tem that would pro­vide care, in­clud­ing new hos­pi­tals, built by the past gov­ern­ment for which this Prime Min­is­ter told us up to last Sat­ur­day we were lucky to have but wasn’t gra­cious enough to ac­knowl­edge that it was an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion’s work.

You see, it is this in­abil­i­ty to stay the course, to do the hard work that is nec­es­sary to get to the fin­ish line that is ex­act­ly the Tri­ni trait and one that if we on­ly had the nev­er say die spir­it of some of our neigh­bours, would have served us right to­day.

T&T is a coun­try that for all of its small size and re­gard­less of the con­stant nar­ra­tive that all is lost, has con­sid­er­able re­sources and but wast­ed a lot of it.

Per capi­ta, this coun­try is one of the wealth­i­est in the Amer­i­c­as. It has sold bil­lions of bar­rels of oil and tril­lions of cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. Its in­fra­struc­ture is eas­i­ly su­pe­ri­or to any­thing in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. It has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in health­care, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion but has been re­luc­tant to do the dif­fi­cult things that will reap the kind of re­wards the peo­ple of this coun­try de­serve.

Just as we tri­fled with COVID-19 un­til it has brought us face to face with a health­care sys­tem burst­ing at its seams with record deaths and in­fec­tions, we ig­nore or fail to deal with our eco­nom­ic malaise at our own per­il.

A day of reck­on­ing will come and I am afraid it is not too far off from now.

For the last five years, there has been the con­stant warn­ing that the cur­rent ex­change rate par­i­ty was not sus­tain­able and that the Gov­ern­ment’s no­tion of a soft land­ing would not work.

We had that con­ver­sa­tion as a na­tion be­fore in the 1980s and it did not work, as we burnt through our for­eign ex­change in a mat­ter of a cou­ple of years and found our­selves at the doorstep of the IMF. The chal­lenge of the econ­o­my then, as is to­day, is that the en­er­gy sec­tor was the en­gine of the econ­o­my and with­out it there was lit­tle that could stand on its own. To­day, our econ­o­my is dif­fer­ent, there is some di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, so oil is not the on­ly prod­uct. There is now gas, petro­chem­i­cals and some lim­it­ed ser­vices. Man­u­fac­tur­ing is stronger, but even that is not a net earn­er of for­eign ex­change and de­pends on the forex from the en­er­gy sec­tor to sur­vive.

The Gov­ern­ment, in 2016 to 2018, did not make the move then. Had it done so there would have per­haps been ben­e­fit from it. In­stead, it de­fend­ed the TT dol­lar, us­ing lim­it­ed US dol­lars and over­see­ing the re­duc­tion in our of­fi­cial re­serves by bil­lions of dol­lars.

Do­ing the hard work of re­mov­ing the bot­tle­necks in the ease of do­ing busi­ness, en­cour­ag­ing and work­ing with com­pa­nies to in­vest their cap­i­tal here for a fair re­turn is too much hard work, and re­spect­ing the pop­u­la­tion to bring them on board and lead them to a bet­ter place re­quired hu­mil­i­ty, lead­er­ship and coun­try first. It was too much for the ad­min­is­tra­tion and its sup­port­ers.

So we did noth­ing and when the un­so­licit­ed, free ad­vice is of­fered by oth­ers, we have the spec­tre of the most ju­nior of ju­nior min­is­ters seek­ing to be­smirch the rep­u­ta­tion and grav­i­tas of some­one like Dr Ter­rence Far­rell. Af­ter all, it’s easy to talk.

We have for a long time known that the health sys­tem is un­be­com­ing and un­less we have rad­i­cal health re­form, it will fail.

Dr Karl Theodore has done ex­ten­sive work on some so­lu­tions from an ad­min­is­tra­tive and eco­nom­ic lev­el and we know that a big part of the chal­lenge of the health­care sys­tem are the sys­tems that do not put pa­tients at the cen­tre of health­care.

In­stead, we lived in the fool’s par­adise that any gov­ern­ment could pro­vide the mon­ey for pub­lic health­care un­less its per­son­al and cor­po­ra­tion tax­es are so high they dis­cour­age in­vest­ment. We pre­fer to dread go­ing to the pub­lic hos­pi­tals rather than do the hard things to fix it.

And now we are faced with what is go­ing to be a game-chang­er. We are faced with the in­evitable end to fos­sil fu­el in a mere 29 years. Yes, there are those who would ar­gue that oil and, in par­tic­u­lar, nat­ur­al gas will be around for a long time. They may be right. But what if they are wrong?

For three days this week, Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States held a glob­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence in which they had lead­ers dis­cuss the is­sue of en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­vis­er on cli­mate change Gi­na Mc­Carthy ar­gued that the coun­try that wins the race to re­new­ables will be the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house.

She said, “The fu­ture is go­ing to be who grabs clean en­er­gy and wins it. And we al­ready know that be­cause of dis­in­vest­ments over the pri­or five years and the lack of even sig­nif­i­cant or suf­fi­cient in­vest­ment, the US lags in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in terms of if we are go­ing to be the win­ner. The ar­gu­ment is the sen­si­tiv­i­ty about who wins and who los­es, who’s left be­hind or not left be­hind. And how we do this, in a way that’s go­ing to be fast enough to meet the mo­ment that we find our­selves in. But al­so care­ful enough for us to recog­nise that in a tran­si­tion, there will be por­tions of the econ­o­my that will be di­vest­ed, and there will be work­ers fac­ing the need for tran­si­tion.”

Nige­ria vice pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Ye­mi Os­in­ba­jo called for a just en­er­gy tran­si­tion for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and en­er­gy pro­duc­ers like T&T. He raised the spec­tre of sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning fur­ther in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els.

“Glob­al­ly, we are see­ing wealth­i­er na­tions and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning all pub­lic in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els, in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas. Ex­am­ples in­clude the Eu­ro­pean Union, the Unit­ed King­dom and Den­mark to name a few, as well as spe­cif­ic in­sti­tu­tions such as the Swede Fund from Swe­den, CDC from the UK, the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank and the In­vest­ment Fund for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries from Den­mark,” he said.

In oth­er words, it has start­ed.

In­creas­ing­ly, there will be pres­sure not to spend on fos­sil fu­el projects and when the in­vest­ments dry up, so too will the pro­duc­tion. T&T is warned we must do the hard things to quick­ly trans­form the econ­o­my. If in­deed, oil and gas con­tin­ues in­to per­pe­tu­ity then that is ok. It will be ex­tra mon­ey that we can save and in­vest. But if the winds of change are so strong that they blow the sec­tor down, we would have found new ways to not just sur­vive but hope­ful­ly to pros­per.

Do we have it in us to do the hard work and see the dan­ger of the sta­tus quo, or do we have to touch the wound like Thomas to know it is re­al?

Cur­tis Williams is sad­dened for the fam­i­lies and friends of all those who have lost their loved ones due to this pan­dem­ic. Like most peo­ple, he too now knows vic­tims.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored