The death of service

WHERE has the spirit of service gone? We remember a time in our history when service to country was a great motivator, when professionals, particularly those who were educated at tax payers’ expense, entered the government’s service with a deep sense of commitment, preferring the satisfaction of serving in a public capacity than engaging in a private and perhaps more lucrative career. It was a time when voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross, the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, the Cadet Force and even the Junior Chamber flourished to the great benefit of the country because there was no scarcity of leaders willing to give selflessly of their time and their individual abilities. The Health Service, the education system and the administration were manned by a breed of doctors and teachers and officers who were dedicated exemplars, virtually giving their lives respectively to the welfare of their patients, the mental and moral development of their young charges and the proper running of government and its various public services.

Ironically enough, this spirit of service blossomed under colonial governments and was inherited by our national society after Trinidad and Tobago gained its independence in 1962. The tragedy of our contemporary era is that, instead of intensifying and becoming more widespread as our people took control of their own affairs, the ideal of public service, under assault by falling moral standards, a conspiracy of foreign cultural influences and the materialistic ethos of “a modern age,” has lost its appeal over generations of decline. Much to the detriment of our country, a genuine and selfless desire to serve may now be regarded as a form of eccentricity, a rare, obsolete, dangerous and upsetting idea whose time has long past. As far as we are concerned, however, it is no coincidence that the sad state of our schools and hospitals, the high level of functional illiteracy among high school graduates, the inadequate and routinely inconsiderate treatment of patients, particularly among the elderly, at our health institutions have been occurring at the same time that the once pervasive spirit of service went into its fatal decline. We now have schools where the absenteeism among teachers is as high as 30 percent, not counting the annual vacations and their sick and casual leave entitlements.

What makes this situation even more disturbing are the increasingly huge chunks of the national budget being spent on education and the health service. For example, of the $17 billion budgeted to be expended domestically this year, a slice of 19 percent is going towards education. As for our doctors, the situation may even be more disgraceful, having regard to the fact that a country with a recognised medical school, turning out more than 30 qualfied doctors every year, finds itself in a crisis to adequately man its hospitals with its own medical officers. As a result, the Government has had to resort to the expedience of importing doctors from Cuba, more than 30 of them, to help provide the professional care required at our public health institutions. Where are all the TT graduate doctors going, those whose training has been subsidised by tax-payers’ dollars and many of whom have benefitted from government scholarships? We can think of no more indecent evidence of the death of service in our country than the flight of these young and selfish doctors. The desire to serve exalts a nation and its people. Without it life can only become more brutish.