THE DRAINS AGAIN !

He suggests that my "outburst" was a "warning" to him not to contact me.

He goes on to state: "This has got to be the oldest trick in the book. The only reason why Mr O’Connor would not want me to contact him....is because he knows that the allegations......cannot stand scrutiny...."

I do apologise to Mr Imbert for the fact that my writing was not clear to him. The responsibility for communicating rests with the writer, not the reader, so if Mr Imbert was confused, it must be my fault — even if he was the only reader who was confused. So, for the record, I did not "warn" Mr Imbert not to contact me, I said that I expected him to, and asked him "to announce the action plan" to clear the drains when he responded.

Of course, he did not announce the action plan, because none exists. How can you have an action plan when you are only now asking Cabinet to consider the commissioning of a drainage study?

His predictable response was to warn of the dire legal and administrative consequences of hiring a backhoe to clean a drain, without spending 15 years to prepare Tender Documents.

By his own writing, Mr Imbert underlines the dreadful administrative failures of successive governments, particularly in the Ministry of Works, to do simple ongoing maintenance work on the country’s drainage system.

The question remains: When will this simple, and low-tech, operation — the clearing of the drains, be done? And if and when it is ever done, the question that will remain will be —What took you so long to do this simple thing ?

Peter O’Connor

Cascade