Dear Editor,
President David Granger is reported as saying that, “…Government plans to embark on a global search for the best qualified personnel to staff the proposed department of energy (DoE)”. This, on the surface, seems to be a rational and well-considered statement by the President. Furthermore, it is difficult to argue with what the President is saying, as we should seek always to employ the ‘best qualified personnel’ to ensure our interests are sufficiently represented and our people and country are safeguarded. What is befuddling, however, is that the Administration, knowingly if one goes by what President Granger said, hadn’t the best skills but chose nevertheless to engage a mammoth corporation as Exxon and its partners in reaching agreement on the extraction of our new-found petroleum resources. Without a doubt, the absence of the right skills has caused the agreement inked with Exxon and its associates to be widely panned and as we saw recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in diplomatic language, expressing its concern. It seems the Government has adopted a putting the cart before the horse approach to governance which has seen it committing folly after folly. Nevertheless, I indeed hope that the best possible skills, barring cronyism and nepotism, could be employed, but I will not hold my breath on this.
Yours faithfully,
Liebert Alleyne
