Mia Mottley rocks! She is so progressive and positive. Fresh leadership for a new era! Her decision to open Barbados for up to a year for anyone to work from there is amazing! Our dependence on oil & gas, which at times has been a blessing, is also our downfall. We cannot seem to make inroads into the development of other industries, not even tourism despite decades of acknowledging the need to diversify our income sources! What about pioneering renewable energy, mass green food production for our region (like in the Netherlands), wellness & green tourism, etc? It is not difficult to spot the opportunities. But in Trinidad we remain stuck in the colonial era, with archaic laws implemented when we were part of an empire that governed 75 per cent of the globe (not needed for a small island the average size of a town or small city in most developed countries).
We love to shuffle paper, making procedures more difficult and mind-boggling for our own people, wasting time & precious resources in the process.
We also do not trust anyone from the outside world to give advice or to help. We would rather spend millions reinventing the wheel each time, paying for useless ‘reports’ (that 99 per cent of the time just gets filed on a shelf), debating for months or years unnecessarily in parliament, tying up funds and causing more frustration to foreign investors and local business owners who operate on a more sincere and keen level than most of our politicians.
Look at the Sandals debacle! We want tourism but how many 5-star hotels do we have on our sister island? St. Lucia, which is roughly twice the size of Tobago and largely undeveloped, has at least ten 5-star-hotels! Yes, that is food for thought!
We cannot even attract one international brand to Tobago’s shores! And the folks running our country once again wasted investors’ time by petty squabbling and months of debate and needless public discourse! And over supposed destruction of natural resources! Hello! There are 5-star hotels operating along Marine National Parks in St. Lucia which are properly regulated and patrolled.
We need someone with balls to step up to the plate and make good decisions...and then enforce and manage responsibly!
Our Trini mentality is killing us. We always want what others have, but each time a new project is put on the table, everyone becomes an ‘expert’ in the field and wants to give their 2 cents worth. Stop it! If we want things to progress, we all have to put our best foot forward, our positivity, our excellence in our own jobs serving each other and then hopefully we can achieve excellence and efficiency in all sectors.
We can start with improving the public services by revamping from the ground up to streamline and simplify government offices’ rules and admin procedures across the board.
It is high time for common sense in our populace and in our leadership. Less talking and more doing! We need vibrant, fresh leaders who are full of ideas and a deep desire to want better for us all. Otherwise I fear we will remain stuck in the 1900’s forever.
Where can we find a Trini version of Mia Mottley?
Anne Shirley B.,
St. Ann’s
via email