Fixing from the ground up

Workers of the Solid Waste Management Company (SWMCO L) which operates the landfill had blocked the entrance in protest against their working conditions.

They were protesting the filthy conditions of their lunch rooms, locker area and toilets and showers. The toilets were apparently clogged and overflowing and the facilities were overrun with rats.

With the threat of garbage piling up in the country’s streets, the Minister of Public Utilities took action.

With media in tow, former Minister Ancil Antoine visited the facilities and cleaned the toilets, lockers and lunch rooms. All this for the aggrieved workers, who lifted their blockade and all was well again.

Should we really feel good about this apparently positive initiative by a Government Minister? The Minister himself was, a few months later, dismissed from his post and from Cabinet. The media, and all of us, were so impressed with his positive and apparently effective action, that we praised his initiative! But now I ask what follow up action the Minister (or you or me?) would have, or should have taken following his having to walk out of his office to go to clean the toilets of the workers? Did he summon the chairman of the board, or the CEO, or the chief operating officer of SWMCO L to ask why the workers’ facilities had reached this state? And if not, why not? Well all of these senior people would have probably been most offended to be asked why the toilets are clogged with filth. “You expect me to clean toilets and exterminate rats?” they would be asking. But they, and successive layers of management and supervision below them, just happen to be responsible for just those activities.

No, we do not expect them to personally scrub toilet bowls, but we should expect that under their management, toilet bowls get cleaned, and someone is actually responsible for the workers that are actually supposed to do this. And that person will ensure that cleaners, detergents, scrubbers, mops and the like are available for the designated workers to keep the toilets clear and clean, and the lunch room, and the locker room, and to ensure that the workers who use these facilities do not destroy or despoil them.

But we can be sure that none of the above has occurred. We can be confident that from board chairman down to supervising janitor (if the latter post even exists) nothing has changed. And nothing ever will, because at no level in governance is maintenance of anything a basic requirement. This is why PSA president Watson Duke can shut down government buildings that are dirty and unhealthy and elevators and air conditioning systems are malfunctioning.

Nobody is cleaning, servicing and fixing anything, and no one is responsible for ensuring that these tasks are performed.

And it is not just buildings which are suffering from the wilful neglect by everyone in every area of governance.

PTSC buses, Ministry of Works’ vehicles, police cars, all pile up in derelict graveyards because they are simply never serviced, small problems are never fixed. The vehicles simply die and then rust away.

And roads and bridges break up before our eyes, unnoticed by anyone in authority. Burst water mains eat roads and create landslips, the oil storage tanks at Petrotrin are rusting away before our eyes. Nothing is fixed until failure is complete and expensive replacement is the only option.

So why is all this appalling, abject failure confined to governance of our country? The people who work for government and State entities own their homes, and their vehicles.

How come their homes and vehicles are clean, sanitary and well maintained? How come this appalling lack of maintenance does not infect the private sector to the same extent? The answers lie in the complete abdication, over the last half century, of any degree of responsibility in governance to clean, service, repair on time or care for anything. But why? The misuse and lack of care for everything which we own borders on sabotage. It is almost a wilful destruction of working environments, equipment and other assets. It is what leads to flooding and landslips as well.

But if we can understand the value of taking care of our equipment, buildings, roads and yes, our lands, then we will greatly improve the quality of our lives, and save millions of dollars currently wasted on failures and rebuilding. Maintenance must be seen as an investment, not an expense.

I call upon the Prime Minister to make 2017 our Year of Maintenance— of everything! Please recognise that this will lift our pride in what we do and what we own as well, bec a useclearly that is also required of us.

Can we understand that?