RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ref­er­enc­ing the con­tro­ver­sial ex­it of for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith from of­fice, busi­ness­man Pe­ter George has lament­ed how po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence has of­ten ham­pered the re­ten­tion of com­pe­tent peo­ple at var­i­ous lev­els of so­ci­ety.

Speak­ing on the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM, where he has been co-host­ing the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at every Tues­day morn­ing, George said the biggest is­sue fac­ing T&T was mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. 

“The coun­try is poor­ly man­aged on mul­ti­ple lev­els. The peo­ple who are most com­pe­tent are (af­fect­ed) by a po­lit­i­cal sys­tem so peo­ple like Gary Grif­fith have gone in­to of­fice and said I’m not go­ing to abide by (pol­i­tics) be­cause I have a man­date to get things done. But peo­ple like Gary Grif­fith go in and get ex­punged, so we are faced with a sys­tem that does not en­cour­age, wel­come and ac­cept tal­ent, “ George said, in an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to Grif­fith’s claim that he was mar­gin­alised for be­ing out­spo­ken against the Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers.  

He not­ed that delin­quen­cy is al­so a ma­jor is­sue that has to be ad­dressed from var­i­ous lev­els, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly.

“Crim­i­nal en­ti­tle­ment is at the gov­ern­ment lev­el. Cor­rup­tion is the root cause of our prob­lems, not just the re­pug­nant theft from pub­lic cof­fers. This is a re­flec­tion of how this place runs,” de­clared George.

Hav­ing been out­spo­ken about mis­man­age­ment for the past 15 years, George said T&T was rich in hu­man re­sources but the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem has im­ped­ed growth.

“We have been im­bued with re­sources, mon­ey, but the po­lit­i­cal par­ty and the State need to be sep­a­rat­ed. That is not the case and peo­ple have to see dif­fer­ent­ly,” George said.

He ex­plained, for ex­am­ple, that it was dis­taste­ful to see the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment tagline at the end of min­istry me­dia re­leas­es.

He said T&T is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly frag­ile and a so­cial re­ces­sion is in the mak­ing.

Com­ment­ing on the re­ports of delin­quen­cy and vi­o­lence at the Siparia West Sec­ondary School, George said delin­quen­cy was learnt be­hav­iour and should be ad­dressed not just at the lev­el of the school but al­so at the lev­el of the fam­i­ly.

“Our bud­gets have been squan­dered. Cor­rup­tion is high. There are pock­ets of bril­liance and fam­i­ly val­ues and civic en­gage­ment in Trinidad, but how do we cre­ate col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a so­ci­ety?” George asked.

He added, “Chil­dren are not born with delin­quen­cy but how we are deal­ing with it is all wrong. Peo­ple say deal with crim­i­nal­i­ty in schools but how do we deal with it? Where does that delin­quen­cy come from?”

He not­ed that the sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion was al­so too cen­tred on grades.

“Suc­cess is far more than grades. It is be­ing aware and con­scious. Our chil­dren are be­ing pres­sured and they are pan­ick­ing about ex­ams and be­com­ing stressed out,” George added.

He said even Car­ni­val has be­come de­grad­ed.

“When you look at the bril­liance of Car­ni­val ... but what it has mor­phed in­to is noth­ing less than a lewd street par­ty where you have to search your way through to find the cre­ativ­i­ty that it was. That’s the kind of degra­da­tion, that’s the in­san­i­ty we are deal­ing with it,” George said.