Short on foresight

Several issues need to be addressed. Crime, education, health, public utilities, infrastructure and the Judiciary are but a few of the challenging areas of daily life in TT.

Surely the government must be at its wits’ end trying to sort these problems, and inherent in these efforts lies one of the major defects of governance in this country — immediacy and the inability to look ahead.

Far too often decisions are taken in an attempt to solve problems immediately — short-term measures, which only result in greater problems down the road. It appears we are digging holes to fill holes or we lack that vital trait of foresight — the ability to predict what will happen or be needed in the future.

Foresight today is no longer a gift that is endowed to psychics or rely on a crystal ball, but scientific approaches to problem-solving, such as contingency planning, risk management, monitoring and evaluation. These are tools employed when dealing with projects and programmes to ensure that chances of failure or of not meeting specific objectives are minimised. These are much more critical when mega-projects or programmes geared towards impacting the well-being of a society are involved.

So I am forced to conclude that we are short on foresight in this country as too many major decisions are being taken with little or no apparent consideration of what will happen or will be needed in the future.

Examples include the decisions taken by the JLSC without apparent consideration of the results of the appointment of Marcia Ayers-Caesar as a judge; the major adjustments to GATE without considering the impact this will have on the quality of tertiary education, its accessibility, or its social impact; the construction of the highway to Point Fortin without consideration of the effects on the environment and the people of the communities in proximity, and the Clico bailout and its current resulting issues. We can even go back to Section 34 and LifeSport — and list goes on.

These are but a few instances where we see the results of short-sightedness in planning and major decision-taking.

Whereas we know that one cannot predict the future, I dare say that careful consideration of the facts and weighing short-term gains against long-term complications must be factors of the planning processes, particularly when scarce public resources are involved.

Far too often we attempt to fix things in TT in hindsight, ending up with exorbitant expenditure on commissions of enquiry and legal fees to recover monies from failed contracts, projects and programmes.

Given our present dire economic circumstances, we are not in a position to sustain the considerable losses in taxpayers’ money as would have occurred in the past. Prudent management of our resources is not an option, but a prerequisite to our sustainable development.

The question is to what extent we employ these foresight measures to improve our decision-making and assure a restless nation that our future is in good hands?

GARVIN COLE Tobago