THE EDITOR:
OVERTAKING on the highways in Trinidad and Tobago has not just gotten worse over the years.

It has become murderously disastrous, like a horrible evil.

Bad overtaking is stalking our roads claiming hundreds of innocent lives.

Most crashes occur, as police records will tell, because of senseless drivers overtaking in a hurry, causing other drivers to either speed up or slow down to get out of and reach the undertaker sooner than his family had expected.

In a daily occurrence, many drivers use the shoulders of the highways. This, of course, is against the law, but seldom are they caught because of the noticeable lack of police patrol.

More traffic police are definitely needed on the highways, and not with cars but with motorcycles because of the obvious ease with which the motorcycles can get through traffic and keep drivers in line.

The police need not give tickets to all the drivers, driving on the shoulder or a bad piece of overtaking, since it is claimed that the courts are packed with policemen defending traffic tickets.

Simply pull the driver off the road and make them wait an hour or two, or make them check one or 200 cars before they are allowed to move again.

While they are doing this, the policeman can continue with his patrolling and return after the allotted time to let the driver go.

Of course, if he doesn’t find the driver when he returns, he can always radio the rest of the patrol to look out for the driver and then give him the stiff penalty, including failure to obey a policeman.

If Commissioner of Police Trevor Paul were to go along with this people would back him all the way, after all, too many lives are being lost uselessly.

Except for murders, no other area causes the loss of so many lives.

The next could be yours through no fault of your own or maybe someone close to you through no fault of theirs either.

THE EDITOR:
MERE weeks after the epic manhunt for the kidnapper/s of Jade Solis in Toco where all the stops were pulled out -- Army, police, helicopters, you name it, it was there -- the son of another businessman, this time of Indian origin, was seized as he was returning home after concluding deliveries for the family grocery; this the first kidnap after passage of the latest in Manning’s arsenal of weapons against crime -- no bail for kidnappers who demand a ransom.

What is entirely unconscionable and heart-rending about this latest matter is that the Police/Army seem to have lost their new-found zeal in the interim.

Are they suffering from the after-effects of that vigorous search in the Toco forests?

Not being, nor wishing to be thought racist, I would hate to think that there is some truth in the saying “what’s in a name”?

I am sure that both Mungroo and his family pay their taxes like everyone else, including the Solis family, and are entitled to the same degree of diligent attention.

This letter is not a complaint against the attention paid to the Solis case, where the perpetrator/s have (for a change) already been taken before the Magistrates’ Court, it is merely a call for a similar degree of attention to be paid in all kidnap cases.

Only thus can we ever hope to control that devil and utilise Manning’s tool of “no bail”.

Let’s not forget those important words in our anthem “where every creed and race find an equal place”.

Every life is a precious gift from God and deserves equal protection and attention.

THE EDITOR:
I AM convinced after reading the Press coverage in TnT, that most of the media is biased against Dookeran and the United National Congress (UNC).

This is because what they have reported regarding Dookeran’s visit and the truth are far apart.

One article mentioned that Dookeran addressed a crowd of 75 people on December 2.

I invited Dookeran to NY after there was a consensus among the members of UNC NY.

There were over 200 people and 90 per cent were Trinidadians.

Apart from all the mandirs we visited, people everywhere were happy to greet the new Political Leader, even on the walkabout on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill.

If you are in TnT and you saw this article or many others that claimed that the event was poorly attended: do not believe the biased publication.

There is a certain element, what I call a malicious political informant, that supplied the inaccurate information to the Press.

He has an axe to grind and if it is not ground to his satisfaction he becomes an ally in adversity.

Dookeran met with a security firm to discuss ways and means to combat crime in TnT.

He met with Senator John Sampson and Assembleman Nick Perry both of New York State.
His appointments and meetings here were not solely to talk about crimes and meet the people but were to engage in serious work for TnT. My letter, to set the records straight, was not published in TnT.

I don’t believe it would be published; nevertheless, I intend to get the message across by other means, for instance this media.

THE EDITOR:
THE decision announced by the Honourable Prime Minister to establish another hospital in PoS reflects the huge credibility gulf that separates what he preaches in public from what he hatches in the privacy of the People’s National Movement (PNM) monopolistic fringe.

Last week, Manning boasted to the Central Chamber of Commerce that political affiliation did not influence the decision-making process of his government.

No one rightfully believed him.

In the very next breath he uses naked political and ethno-nationalistic considerations to locate another hospital in PoS.

Firstly, it must be appreciated that in TnT, geography, politics and ethnicity are inseparable if not identical.

Secondly, all citizens irrespective of where they live, have an alinenable right to equality of treatment not only in respect of access to new employment opportunities but also in respect of easy access to health-care and other services.

Why locate another major hospital in PoS when Chaguanas is without a hospital?

Chaguanas is easily accessible to citizens from North, South, Central, East and West.

Must we not decentralise from PoS and really integrate this society by making all communities equally accessible to services?

Why do we in Central have to travel to PoS that is emerging as the bomb capital and therefore endanger the safety of patients or place their welfare in jeopardy?

Where is the equality of treatment even from a geographical view point?

Who will get the ancillary jobs at the hospital?

Why must citizens have to travel so far to access health- care in a cramped location with inadequate parking and other obstacles?

We must be told why another hospital PoS in this ad hoc, vikey vike, decision-making scenario?

I firmly believe in the imperatives of achieving real internal cohesiveness and balanced development.

You cannot deliberately continue to deprive our citizens to equality of treatment in so many areas of national life.

You cannot exclude communities and then begin to wonder why our society is polarised.

Geography coincides with ethnicity.

Is this hospital’s location another manifesta-tion of PNM’s ethno-nationalistic agenda?

Proper planning should tell us to establish a major health facility in Central having regard to Manning’s own admission with respect to the exploding population growth, the expanding industrial base in all parts of Central and urbanisation.

That is the natural way to go. But political expedience rules in TnT. You are building a major hospital in Tobago with enormous overruns to serve 60,000 people.

But you cannot accommodate the entitlements of the law-abiding and tax-paying of Central?

The people of Central must rise up and put a stop to alienation and deprivation from equality of treatment.

Urban renewal and duplication of services cannot and must not take precedence over rural regeneration because the former is beneficial to one ethnic group that will get all the jobs.

The women of Central have a fundamental right to develop their nursing skills in a nearby facility.

We will have three performing arts centres within a half-mile radius in PoS.

So why not also two hospitals side, by side PNM-style?