It is quite evident these days people are in survival mode. Long before COVID-19 came about, we were feeling the pinch and things were not right, but we endured.
Since the advent of the pandemic, though, things have worsened and became more crucial. Everybody is trying to sell something to make ends meet, but the state expects them to keep a Social Distance. Yet it keeps cramping them in small spaces.
Yet, if you look around the City and immediate surroundings you may notice unused areas that can be converted into selling zones but remain as is because it has been earmarked for some previous ambitious plan.
Take the old fire station and previous police station sites earmarked for a touristic pro-ject between the Royal Caribbean Cruise agency and the government. Now, consider if the City Council and the city’s MP and other well-wishers and representatives or the government, planners and advisors would only think outside the box, or their comfort zones, with the same funds that they are frequently negotiating these days, they can at least make a difference, even temporary, by putting some basic units such as wash rooms, water and a few well-suited tents, a couple benches, this could ease the squeeze.
What prevents the duplication of the same ideas in other spaces, like the just-fenced Adjodah Building’s burnt space in the boulevard, before it becomes another business center? Can’t the state at lease rent it for a few months or years, considering so much of our other lands have been lost through big investment deals of late?
There is another big open space, one that used to be a housing settlement not too long ago where the simple people lived and which I now call ‘Bushville’. It used to be known as “The CDC in La Clery’, now waiting again for some big project owned by someone high in society to obtain. But can’t this open space also be transferred to a survival space in the interest of good government? The state and by extension the government can find the funds, but they seem to lack the will to stare the problem in the face.
The focus still remains on profitable adventures, making deals and satisfying the needs of a few and those struggling at the bottom do not seem to count, yet at the same time, the governing party hopes that same grouping of people will vote to keep them in power.
How strange, life has become, its’ still about divide and rule, use and abuse, con, bluff, deceive, spout-out hope on the campaign but do the contrary when in office, then after one gets elected the program seems to change or get altered, the agenda changes.
Ironically, it is the people who must see the reality, they have to check themselves, they have to demand the changes and the support they need, because if they show no concern and take no action, they’ll have no reason to complain.
But then, as per usual, I may be seeing things different.
Things do not change with talk, granted talk can change things, or your mind, but ac-tion gives better results, the people must articulate what they want, if they are feeling the stress, they have to find ways to express it. They cannot continue to hope that the government will assist them or care about their plight. Governments do what they think we want and do things as they please, but do they ever consult or discuss with us what they plan to do and if it will affect us in any way?
Do the rules and laws that they pass work in our interests? Are we commanded to obey and can we object, or reconsider? Is it their way or the highway? For who are they building this New St. Lucia? Will we be able to live in it after they have sealed the deal?
Wow! I sit and wait, watch and observe and, like everybody else, go with the flow.
Now the new craze is about being vaccinated, as, apparently, it will keep us alive and through this action we will endure and survive the times. Wow! Another myth another bluff, another hope, another means of deceiving us — another ‘good’ that our govern-ment is doing for us. Some believe it, some don’t. But we will all see…
Meanwhile, considering everything, that’s all I can say for now: Wow!