Commentary

Uncivil 'waste' of a service

WHEN I SAW Alston Stewart on television earlier this year blasting his critics, daring them to provide evidence of corruption or mismanagement at the National Solid Waste Management Agency or 'shut their damned mouths', I remember thinking at the time that what if an investigation does find evidence of mismanagement or corruption? What would Stewart say or do then?

I now know the answer to that question: absolutely nothing. I can't hear a peep out of the former executive chairman, after the damning report released by the Contractor General has shown that not only was there evidence of mismanagement and probable corruption at the NSWMA, the report also shows that it was as rampant as a mad bull in a meat market.

Stewart's show of arrogance is one of the reasons I am so appalled at the behaviour of some of our civil servants. You put them in charge of some money, hoping that they spend it wisely, because as we all know money does not grow on trees, and what do they do? They give away our money to their friends and company who use it to buy Prados and expensive townhouses and fly their girlfriends and boyfriends first class to vacations in France when people like you and I can't even get an affordable mortgage.

It's kind of like every time you give the helper money to pay the bills, she uses the money to pay her bills instead and you are left in the dark when JPS cuts off your light, C&W cuts off your phone and the National Water Commission disconnects your pipes.

Taxpayers' dollars

Is this what the civil service has become under the People's National Party; a place from where the inept and the corrupt can tap into the Consolidated Fund while we are left to find more money to fulfil our basic needs?

Six months cannot go by without some new scandal being exposed wherein billions of taxpayers' dollars end up in the pockets of some bureaucrat's friends only to have Omar tell you every April that you need to fork out that much more so that he can balance the budget. The way I see it, if we could have saved all the money that is being wasted, stolen and given away, we would have a budget surplus by now.

What we all need to do next year when Omar is asking for more money, we need to tell him go collect it from all those people who have been getting fat and comfortable off our hard earned dollars, who live behind the walls of their gated communities with 24-hour security while we are running for cover from the hail of gunmen's bullets.

People like the former board member who was reportedly being paid for legal services at a rate of $10,000 per hour for 16 hours a week! That's $640,000 a month! I want a job like that. I wonder if the NSWMA needs a journalistic consultant? I could sure use the money.

What makes me even more mad is that teachers can't get a proper salary increase, hospitals don't have enough doctors and the police are being told that the Government does not have the money to pay them. The Government it seems only has the money to give away to their friends when the people who put their lives on the line so that we can live better lives, can't even get a crumb.

How long can this go on though, before someone goes to prison, before Omar and PJ say enough is enough? Is it going to take a demonstration of the nature of the 1999 gas riots before politicians in charge of the public purse realise that the bottom has just about fallen from the bucket?