Are we a secret society?

THE EDITOR: Someone who identified herself as Cheryl Baptiste of the Marketing Department of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) instructed me over the phone to put in writing a request for the names for the members of the PTSC board — information I need to update my files. Baptiste said she was told to say so by Nicole Chapman, Corporate Secretary.

Have we become a secret society like the USSR prior to 1987, where information was closely guarded, and the public was routinely denied routine information? When it becomes necessary to write a formal request for something as basic as the names of board members of a State Corporation in a country in which I happen to be a citizen by birth, then I am seriously wondering about the direction in which we are heading. If verification was the aim, my name and phone number are in the phone book, and I could have been given the names over the phone. Instead, iron bureaucracy prevailed. Away with bumptious officialese and tedious twaddle!

LLOYD CARTAR
Port-of-Spain