Give Jack his jacket

29.AUG.08

EDITOR: Two weeks ago, an Editorial in The News commended the Government for introducing a modern, laminated and secure Driver’s Licence for the first time ever. Typical of the Editor, he could not resist chiding the Government for not doing so much earlier.{{more}}

Of course, the Editorial was not fair enough to point out explicitly that colonialism kept “the paper licence” up to 1961; that Ebenezer Joshua Party kept it that way for 15 years between 1967 and 1972 and 1974 to 1984; and that the Mitchell-Eustace NDP kept it that way for 17 years between 1984 and 2001. The ULP’s efforts and modernising the state administration generally got no mention. The PM repeatedly details these efforts.

I have never seen The News or any other newspaper praising the ULP government for modernising and updating the passport system. It cost several million dollars to put us at the head of the queue in CARICOM with a top class machine-readable passport with innumerable security features. This was done by June 2005, even though the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the USA, Europe and Canada have mandated 2010 as the cut-off date for the use of non-machine-readable passports. Trinidad and Tobago, with all its resources, is struggling to meet a 2010 deadline; so, too, are some other CARICOM countries.

Interestingly, the firm which the ULP government contracted to do the passport system, the Canadian Bank Note (CBN) company, has now been recruited by the USA to do their new passports. Minister René Baptiste has also announced that CBN has been contracted, at a cost of a few million dollars, to modernise our electoral system with new cards, software, hardware, and systems.

Let’s give Jack its Jacket and commend the ULP government on its excellent reform and modernisation of the State administration. Let’s not just criticize or pull down mindlessly.

Ezra John Bullock