Honourable Ministers, please respect my time

It happens all the time. Most functions to which you are invited are scheduled to begin at a specific time; and you, colloquially, "break your neck" to get there on time only to find out that you are very, very early because a minister of government who is scheduled to address that meeting is very, very late. If there are two or three ministers listed to deliver addresses on the programme, the late start can stretch to nearly an hour. As it frequently happens, one very late minister keeps the other late minister waiting.

It happened again last week Monday and I suffered along with the Manager of LIME and the manager of the AIDB among others. Now, my time is probably not worth much to our ministers ( I'm old and retired and getting ready to R.I.P) but these CEOs are paid tens of thousands of dollars per month; to do what- sit there and waste time, waiting for a minister? (Mr Baptiste, the Manager of LIME, I observed last Monday, used the time aggressively pecking at his BlackBerry).

After all that time wasting by the ministers of government, they will tell you that Dominica must become internationally competitive?

Now, did I hear you ask whether the ministers apologised for being late? No they didn't. To erase the need to apologise for the regular lateness of our ministers, I suggest that in addition to saying at the beginning of speeches: "Protocol having been established" the chairperson should say "apologises for lateness having been established from the last meeting…" Our perpetually tardy ministers would love that, wouldn't they?

Now, where are the Parry Bellots and our other local productivity experts who always blame the little Votes Clerk for wasting tax payers' money? They seem to conveniently forget that fish starts rotting from the head.

Time Manager