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Sunday, December 16, 2007
It looks like the fan's about to be hit again, according to the lead story announcing the National Solid Waste Management Authority's (NSWMA) decision to call in the Police Fraud Squad to probe apparently fraudulent claims made for work done in the aftermath of Hurricane Dean last August.
And without pre-empting anything, we must say that it doesn't look good at all.
What with revelations of licence plates belonging to luxury sport and other vehicles which, on the face of it, could have no apparent role in the hurricane clean-up process, turning up on claim forms for heavy-duty work, we can only hold out the slimmest of hopes for a reasonable explanation.
Because experience tells us that when things get this far, apparent irregularities usually turn out to be nasty, in this case messy, realities featuring the themes of dishonesty, graft and corruption.
Mrs Joan Gordon-Webley, the executive director of the NSWMA, is really going to have to press for the speediest resolution of this issue, which has the potential of creating a national health hazard.
For the issue of garbage collection cannot be put on hold to facilitate lengthy, albeit crucial, probes. Something must be done - and quickly - in the interim to prevent the pile-ups that will inevitably result if the unpaid contractors - 200 according to yesterday's story - stop working.
And speaking of messes and hazards, we are happy that an explanation has been found - at least in part - for the big oil spill which was discovered along the Ironshore coastline in St James by a hotel employee on Friday.
The spill, a threat to the area's marine life, appears to be attributable to the misdeeds of truckers who obviously don't understand, or couldn't care less about the implications of just dumping what appears to be used oil along the coast.
Like the creators of the mess at the NSWMA, those behind the illegal dumping of the oil in Ironshore appear to have acted in the belief that the chances of being brought to book were worth taking, given the convenience of profiting at the expense of the public.
This really is the saddest phenomena of all - the employment of dishonesty, not on the part of the poor and desperate whose backs are against the wall, but on the part of the well-to-do greedy.
These are they who are able to maintain luxury vehicles, dine finely, keep up with the latest fashion trends and thumb their noses at those who can't.
They move about in society, wolves in sheep clothing, robbing and raping the system with bright, broad smiles on their faces, creating nasty conundrums that end up costing the rest of us who, for the most part anyway, opt for the straight and narrow, dearly.
It's horribly unfair on the face of it, but on a more profound level, the cost that we as a society pay for the misdeeds of the scamps among us is really the price tag on our failure to realise that in the natural scheme of things, every chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
It looks like the fan's about to be hit again, according to the lead story announcing the National Solid Waste Management Authority's (NSWMA) decision to call in the Police Fraud Squad to probe apparently fraudulent claims made for work done in the aftermath of Hurricane Dean last August.
And without pre-empting anything, we must say that it doesn't look good at all.
What with revelations of licence plates belonging to luxury sport and other vehicles which, on the face of it, could have no apparent role in the hurricane clean-up process, turning up on claim forms for heavy-duty work, we can only hold out the slimmest of hopes for a reasonable explanation.
Because experience tells us that when things get this far, apparent irregularities usually turn out to be nasty, in this case messy, realities featuring the themes of dishonesty, graft and corruption.
Mrs Joan Gordon-Webley, the executive director of the NSWMA, is really going to have to press for the speediest resolution of this issue, which has the potential of creating a national health hazard.
For the issue of garbage collection cannot be put on hold to facilitate lengthy, albeit crucial, probes. Something must be done - and quickly - in the interim to prevent the pile-ups that will inevitably result if the unpaid contractors - 200 according to yesterday's story - stop working.
And speaking of messes and hazards, we are happy that an explanation has been found - at least in part - for the big oil spill which was discovered along the Ironshore coastline in St James by a hotel employee on Friday.
The spill, a threat to the area's marine life, appears to be attributable to the misdeeds of truckers who obviously don't understand, or couldn't care less about the implications of just dumping what appears to be used oil along the coast.
Like the creators of the mess at the NSWMA, those behind the illegal dumping of the oil in Ironshore appear to have acted in the belief that the chances of being brought to book were worth taking, given the convenience of profiting at the expense of the public.
This really is the saddest phenomena of all - the employment of dishonesty, not on the part of the poor and desperate whose backs are against the wall, but on the part of the well-to-do greedy.
These are they who are able to maintain luxury vehicles, dine finely, keep up with the latest fashion trends and thumb their noses at those who can't.
They move about in society, wolves in sheep clothing, robbing and raping the system with bright, broad smiles on their faces, creating nasty conundrums that end up costing the rest of us who, for the most part anyway, opt for the straight and narrow, dearly.
It's horribly unfair on the face of it, but on a more profound level, the cost that we as a society pay for the misdeeds of the scamps among us is really the price tag on our failure to realise that in the natural scheme of things, every chain is only as strong as its weakest link.