Colonial relics ('Nobody gets the keys!')

July 07, 2004

There is an amusing story, versions of which I have been fortunate to have overheard on numerous occasions while in attendance at my favourite watering hole in Tunapuna. The gist of the story is as follows.

It happened that this particular individual, who was born and grew up in Tunapuna, obtained a security job at this industrial plant in the area that was owned and managed by British expatriates.

On one Friday afternoon, while this said individual was on duty, he was handed some keys to a highly secured area of the plant where, amongst other sensitive things, spare parts for major equipment and machinery were stored.

The instruction that the British chief executive officer gave to this security guard while handing over the keys was that he was not to give those keys to anyone. The CEO then left for Barbados for the weekend.

The plant was operating around the clock, running three shifts, in keeping with its production schedules.

Sometime on the Saturday there was a breakdown on one of the production lines and the local maintenance engineer was called in to handle the repairs and get production levels back up to the norm.

After doing a survey of what was required to be done, the maintenance engineer approached the security guard for the keys so that he could obtain certain spare parts. The security guard replied: "Nobody gets the keys!"

A whole host of middle managers of the company attempted to reason with the security guard but to no avail. The more they pleaded, the more he bared his fangs, so to speak, and snarled: "Nobody gets the keys!"

One official asked the guard whether he was aware that there was a breakdown on one of the production lines, to which the guard replied affirmatively.

Then that same official asked him if he knew and could identify the maintenance engineer. The guard indicated that he knew and was fully acquainted with the work that the maintenance engineer does at the plant.

"Okay," said the official, pleased that at least a breakthrough was forthcoming, "then allow him to have the keys so that he can take out the spare parts he needs and get on with his work!

"Nobody gets the keys! Nobody gets the keys! Nobody gets the keys!"

No line of reasoning, no sense of logic could penetrate the mind of that security guard. The company had to fly the CEO back from Barbados to unlock the mindset of that bulldog.

The CEO, direct from the airport, walked into the guard booth, took away the keys from the now quite tame security guard and fired the idiot summarily for jeopardising the general welfare of the plant with his misplaced sense of duty and diligence and his bloated, overvalued sense of personal importance to the system and scheme of things.

Many years have passed since then but even today no one in Tunapuna dares to heckle this ex-security guard by shouting at him: "Nobody gets the keys," because if you do, you have to be fleet of foot for the man, you see, is a giant six-footer with muscle even behind the ears.

At 2 am on Friday last while listening to Prime Minister Manning wind up the debate on the police reform bills and hearing him describe the positions held by the chairman of the Police Service Commission, I could not help but wonder about the depth of his malaise that serves to hinder intelligent functioning here almost as a matter of natural course.

Mr Manning indicated that in his ten years of service, twice as PM and as leader of the Opposition, he could not, despite attempts, establish any working relationship with these commissions.

The commissions were set up at the time of independence to guarantee the separation of powers, the separation of the legislature from the Executive and from the judiciary, and to insulate the civil rights of all citizens from the malicious interference of politicians.

We need to remember that independence came shortly after the break-up of the Federation when the distrust and suspicion between the races had intensified.

Moreover Indo-Caribbean people were then of the view that they would be marginalised within any form of political regionalism, and these fears had to be considered and be calmed in context of independence and the nationalist agenda.

To accomplish this, the commissions were the key planks worked out at Malborough House where we went before the "big white man" to get our Independence.

The point is that these institutions of checks and balances since then have been worked and administrated in such a way that they now render management at all levels ineffective and "constipated."

Imagine the Police Service has been in disarray for quite some time with areas of responsibility strewn here, there and everywhere without any direct interrelation, and after a number of inquiries and investigations, from the Leith to the O’Dowd, nothing happens.

Yet the chairman of the Police Service Commission cannot see the importance for himself and the Prime Minister, and others such as the Commissioner of Police, to sit down and work out the coherent parameters of modern management of the Police Service.

In other words, as Mr Manning alluded, with everyone playing God on his own little turf and guarding it viciously without any sense of the big picture, "nobody will ever get the keys!"