Letters to the editor
Newsday
Editor: Old letters kept for no apparent reason. Broken furniture, useless crockery and cutlery, newspapers and bagged rubbish are finally thrown away. The walls have been stripped of their slippery paint, the floor finishes have been stripped and the old furniture has been thrown away. Piles of old clothes, old trinkets that you have never touched in years, old tools, boxes of things that have just been put away but are no longer useful are thrown away and the place is thoroughly cleaned.
Then comes the exciting part – new paint, flat screen TV replacing that bumpy bare screen TV. New furniture, cleaned out closets with room for new clothes now that the old ones have been thrown away.
Suddenly, the house looks new, you feel full of energy, you can finally sit down and enjoy watching a movie or reading a book. It feels good to breathe fresh new air. The burden of years of accumulated waste is gone and a new day – a new life – is born.
Renewal! Wow! That’s wonderful. It energizes the soul. Christmas time gives some of us a glimpse of that renewal. New replacing the old and useless. This is what is required in TT.
We cannot continue with people and a system that makes excuses for doing nothing to alleviate flooding. A management totally lost in its incompetence regarding water distribution. Politicians get comfortable with court cases that take decades to be heard. A management that grows increasingly comfortable with gunmen imposing their judgment and power daily from the barrel of their guns. A police service so disorganized that simply appointing a leader is a monumental task. No policy regarding land surveying and ownership certification. Unable to do simple things like assign official vehicle identification plates. An economic policy that actually simply says, “let’s hope foreigners find more oil and gas so we can benefit from the taxes.”
This situation cannot continue. It is time for a major restructuring. Time to clean out and discard years of accumulated junk and incompetence and start afresh.
As we approach the new year, we should see concerted efforts to fix every road in the TT. We need to see state-issued vehicle identification plates. We need to see a renewal in our justice system with daily court hearings for murder and gun violence, plea deals, dismissals of cases that are decades in the making. We should see water in every house and village. There should be structured police patrols to allow every sector of TT to be safe again.
Agriculture, tourism, cultural celebrations, sports, education and social services must be restructured to energize the population to work together towards a renewed nation. A total restructuring, getting rid of the old and entering the new. New ideas, new initiatives and new management personnel.
We can do it. It is what gives us hope. Let 2023 be the beginning of that renewal.
Happy New Year, TT.
STEVE ALVAREZ
by e-mail
