The Tribune

HERE comes the cavalry!

The news about a partnership between conservationists, Atlantis and Disney is the kind of corporate involvement in the community of which we need to see more.

Well done to all concerned for their work to help save our coral reefs.

The Perry Institute for Marine Science will partner with the giant businesses to create what is called a coral reef gene bank.

It will mean that endangered coral can be relocated, while new coral can be grown and bred. It could stop some species of coral from becoming extinct.

That’s the bouquet, now for the brickbat.

As detailed in The Tribune last week, scientists are presently left tangled up in red tape as they try to carry out research or, as is the case with the conservationists here, save endangered species.

The Perry Institute finds itself in the same boat. As Dr Craig Dahlgren, institute director, said: “We do have permits to assess and continue to treat it. But we can’t collect corals, rescue them from harm’s way and bring them into a facility.”

A new Cabinet paper is supposed to sort all of that out – with the current government blaming the former administration for the implementation of the Biological Resources and Traditional Knowledge Act.

As for the previous administration’s Environment Minister, Romauld Ferreira, in a shocking failure to take responsibility, in yesterday’s Tribune, he blamed civil servants for “hijacking” the act, and being inflexible in the application of its rules and procedures.

He said: “Unfortunately we had some civil servants take it over, and the rigid application of rules and procedures led to some challenges, but it can easily be overcome.”

Not good enough, Mr Ferreira. As the minister in charge, the legislation should have been framed in such a way that it could not be derailed by the whim of civil servants – that was almost entirely the point, to stop discriminatory decisions on different applications. If an Act could so easily be derailed, to the extent it brought scientific expeditions in the country grinding to a halt, then it was badly written in the first place. If the civil servants were following the law, then the law was flawed. If they were breaking the law, then how come the first you’re talking about it is now?

Whatever solution is put forward by the current administration, we hope it fixes those flaws – and lets projects such as this partnership between scientists, tourism and entertainment empires go ahead.

We would love to hope that it can pave the way for more such ventures for the benefit of the nation.

Food programme

FNM leader Michael Pintard is right when he says the government should have handled the row over the food programme better.

All around, the government was complaining it didn’t have data from the National Food Distribution Task Force. The Tribune managed to see the records by simply visiting the office of task force chairperson Susan Larson. She told us the government had been given the records already. And yet still the loud complaining went on.

Even if the government couldn’t find the records they’d already been given – why didn’t they just ask instead of blasting it as some terrible example of previous governance?

And what influence will such loud and public commentary have on the audit process now going on? Can that truly be a fair process if the Prime Minister has been supplying side commentary?

Perhaps it is easier to point the finger elsewhere because not a great deal of legislation has taken place yet, to say “look at them” rather than “look at us”.

Either way, there seems to have been far better ways to have handled this. And now that the government has been provided the documentation again, we will be interested to see if that brings any change in the tone of the rhetoric.