There must be a re­la­tion­ship be­tween main­te­nance neg­li­gence and the health and well-be­ing of cit­i­zens, com­mu­ni­ty de­cay, and crime. I ex­trap­o­late this from the ar­ti­cle of Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 18 by the em­i­nent Dr David Bratt, who en­light­ened read­ers on what car­ing for the health of the pub­lic means. He wrote that the act of “mak­ing a di­ag­no­sis and in­ject­ing a drug is not car­ing for the pa­tient,” that con­cern for pa­tients’ “men­tal, emo­tion­al, so­cial needs,” and “re­spect for their dig­ni­ty and self-es­teem” are es­sen­tial as­pects of their care.

Health must be viewed holis­ti­cal­ly. In his en­gag­ing piece, he re­ferred to the “old and run down, gloomy and dirty” Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal build­ing with its crowd­ed and un­com­fort­able wait­ing room, the non-func­tion­ing filthy bath­rooms, the ab­sence of main­te­nance, the late serv­ing of meals, forc­ing pa­tients to bring their own, and the harm caused to pa­tients, es­pe­cial­ly the old­er ones—an ut­ter lack of re­spect for cit­i­zens.

In­deed, I can tes­ti­fy to the truth of what he said, hav­ing had the ex­pe­ri­ence of vis­it­ing a rel­a­tive at that hos­pi­tal not long ago. I re­call the shab­bi­ness of the en­vi­ron­ment, pa­tients’ urine be­ing tak­en out, and some hav­ing spilt in the door­way of the ward. To my hor­ror, the fol­low­ing day, when I vis­it­ed, the urine was gelled brown in the same spot.

No doubt the health au­thor­i­ties will say they care be­cause they’re build­ing new hos­pi­tals and that the POS hos­pi­tal is old, but an im­pres­sive, well-equipped new one is near­ing com­ple­tion, obliv­i­ous of the fact that the is­sues are no­to­ri­ous neg­li­gence in the main­te­nance of pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture and the qual­i­ty stan­dard of care.

As Dr Bratt said, com­pe­tence and com­pas­sion can­not ex­ist with­out each oth­er. Com­pe­tence in­cludes proac­tive­ness when it comes to pub­lic health. For ex­am­ple, va­p­ing among young peo­ple is in­creas­ing, and out­lets are spring­ing up every­where. How­ev­er, there are se­ri­ous health dan­gers to vapers and those around them. While sta­tis­tics on va­p­ing are not avail­able, the emer­gence of sev­er­al out­lets is ev­i­dence of in­creas­ing de­mand.

A vape pen is a de­liv­ery sys­tem which heats up liq­uid nico­tine flavour­ing, propy­lene gly­col, and oth­er ad­di­tives, form­ing an aerosol with dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals, caus­ing col­lapsed lungs, or­gan dam­age, and oth­er health con­di­tions.

The de­vices can ex­plode, pro­ject­ing sharp, hot ob­jects harm­ful to oth­ers. Still, the Min­istry of Health has not tak­en leg­isla­tive ac­tion sim­i­lar to about 40 coun­tries that have bans on va­p­ing, for pos­ses­sion and use, sales, im­por­ta­tion, or a com­bi­na­tion of mea­sures.

Be­sides health and hos­pi­tal main­te­nance is­sues, we are wit­ness­ing the tragedy Ari­api­ta Av­enue has be­come—in that once clean and beau­ti­ful Wood­brook neigh­bour­hood. The May­or of Port-of-Spain, Chin­ua Al­leyne, was sworn in­to of­fice in 2023, promis­ing to make de­ci­sions guid­ed by “com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­no­vate, pri­ori­tise lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, ad­dress home­less­ness and lit­ter­ing, fix roads, and trans­form the city,” pre­sum­ably for the bet­ter. He took pride in cre­at­ing the “Caribbean’s first Chi­na­town on Char­lotte Street.” We are ac­cus­tomed to po­lit­i­cal sh**-talk.

Fast for­ward to 2025. Stroll down Chi­na­town and ex­pe­ri­ence a shan­ty town with the Chi­nese dé­cor in sham­bles; cross Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, mind­ful of va­grants and hold­ing your nose; head for Ari­api­ta Av­enue un­der black, coil­ing snakes of over­head wires; view the hap­haz­ard ac­cu­mu­la­tion of busi­ness­es and hoard­ings—no sense of plan­ning, clean­li­ness, com­pas­sion for Wood­brook’s res­i­dents, pride in our coun­try, and re­spect for or­der­ly de­vel­op­ment.

If one’s psy­che doesn’t re­act to the shab­bi­ness and the wan­ton sup­plant­i­ng of the coun­try’s nat­ur­al beau­ty by seed­i­ness, then there must be high pub­lic im­mu­ni­ty to hor­ror. Cringe at the once peace­ful Adam Smith Square, now a va­grant par­adise—stink and scary.

Who is ac­count­able? The PoS Cor­po­ra­tion’s mis­sion is to pro­vide lo­cal ser­vices that im­prove “the qual­i­ty of life” of the city’s burgess­es. Who is re­spon­si­ble for wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars on the ug­ly, pink, slip­pery tiles on Ari­api­ta Av­enue side­walks, now break­ing off, and the blue lights herald­ing the Tri­ni ver­sion of a red-light dis­trict—fruits of some­one’s shal­low thought process?

Both the hos­pi­tal sit­u­a­tion and the state of the Av­enue demon­strate that mon­ey isn’t the prob­lem but a dearth of in­no­va­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, ef­fi­cient re­source util­i­sa­tion, ser­vice qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing and con­se­quence man­age­ment. No ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The high price of main­te­nance neg­li­gence is pub­lic health, safe­ty, and com­mu­ni­ty de­cay—the back­drop of crime and cor­rup­tion.