Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Aujourd'hui 06:50

Mental emancipation the answer

THE EDITOR: Can the years of slavery and indentureship have such a long-term negative effect on our population that we find it difficult to work for ourselves and arrive at acceptable international standards of self-management? Have the years on depending on others for food, clothing and shelter left us with a culture of dependency? As a country we are failing to get to an acceptable level of civility, economic stability, and growth. We seem to think that the solution must come from seeking the intervention of others, soliciting rather than being transactional. The government has indicated a desire to go to the Middle East to get investments and funding for an extremely ambitious infrastructure plan. But are we doing the best we can with the limited resources we have? We are failing in getting the basics right. The optics emanating from our country is poor. With less than 1.5 million people with limited roads, we continue to struggle with extremely high levels of criminal activity in almost every community. We continue with a judicial system where justice that should take months take years, in some cases decades. We are unable to restore the roads after minor plumbing repairs. With an abundance of water, we are unable to efficiently distribute the commodity and are caught in a financial trap of paying a private company for desalinated water in foreign currency. The most prominent public buildings, the Prime Minister’s residence, the Prime Minister’s Office, and President’s House, deteriorate daily as there seem to be no structured repair and maintenance plans in place. The capital city is daily degenerating into looking like a slum. There is no major investment in the natural tourism sites. No effort to restore agriculture that was once the major source of income for the country. The structure of local government has deteriorated into an inability to service communities and consequently youth development, sports, drainage, and garbage collection suffer. The illegal occupation of state lands and failing education standards contribute to what can be seen as leading to a failed state. There is no foreign saviour, and no amount of loans and investment can change the current situation. We the people of TT must fix our country for ourselves. We must clean up our cities, towns and villages, invest in food production, improve our tourism package, and encourage manufacturing and investment in our country. We are the ones to demonstrate national pride. We must preserve our national buildings and major infrastructure like the Jean Pierre Complex that seem to be left abandoned. To make our country better requires input from all citizens. If we continue along the path of us and them, red and yellow instead of red, white, and black, then we will remain a people stuck in a culture of dependency, unable to emancipate ourselves from what can be seen by many as some degree of mental slavery. STEVE ALVAREZ via e-mail The post Mental emancipation the answer appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.