Dear Editor,

The discoloured walls with vines, the broken windows and rusting machinery with chimneys falling apart tells a story of a once-busy sugar factory.

The rusted tanks, discarded pipelines, and rusting machinery paint a sad picture of what was once a vibrant oil refinery. The broken up conveyor belts and looted buildings that are now cover for gangs with guns were once a citrus factory on the base of the Laventille hills. The unique feat of engineering in which pipes and valves thread through the northern range to refill the Hollis reservoir during the dry season are now abandoned forever. Our fields that were once planted with sugar cane, citrus, peas, coconuts, rice, cocoa, and coffee are now abandoned with grass and squatter communities. Our forests’ majestic trees are being cut daily and sold for lumber, without control, as the environment suffers.

Our young people at very early stages of their lives are subject to music with lyrics that support violence, praise alcoholism and drugs, and consist of the most profane of languages. There are rich public officers who consider it the norm to seek financial inducements before doing their duty. Getting justice takes years, the law is disregarded, squatting in full view of officials, like that currently ongoing on the Lady Young Road, goes unchecked. There are no attempts to regularise legal landowners as cases are extremely expensive and time-consuming. Police patrols in communities are rare and citizens are urged by authorities to form watch groups to defend themselves against a rise in home invasions.

Simple things like registering births and deaths are time-consuming and burdensome. Fire stations are without critical firefighting equipment. Police and other public vehicles are poorly maintained and simply discarded in open yards after a few years of use. No attempt is made to sell them or have them repaired until they have been left to rot for years. Our schools are becoming a place for the violent groups to roam, for children to be introduced to marijuana, and for sharing materials of ill repute rather than a place for education and a disciplined approach to the trades and sports.

Where are the next set of engineers, doctors, financial professionals, lawyers, and world-class sports personnel to come from? In what environment? When will there be order in the society, whereby those employed to upkeep the law no longer take financial inducements to close their eyes to lawlessness?

Fixing Trinidad and Tobago is no one-man job. It requires every citizen, every community, every religious body, every social grouping to participate in the repair. That requires turning away from racial and sectarian voting patterns and electing the best people committed to the humongous task of rebuilding. It calls for us to renew our hope for a better country. We have the personnel, skills, equipment, and knowledge to fix our homeland. We now need the political will.

Steve Alvarez

Trinidad and Tobago

bilcoa@hotmail.com