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 Citizens Engagement. Tell a friend about this article.
Only the superficial and fanatic loyalists amongst us would casually dismiss the wave of sporadic community protests that now seem regular in Trinidad and Tobago including the one recently witnessed in the Guapo area. Such actions must not be trivialized and dismissed as the work of a recalcitrant few, while “the silent majority” looks on with disdain. World Trend In some ways the actions of the communities and villagers are but a microscopic reflection of a global trend that seems to be reverting to “people” leaders who understand their role and commitment to their society and its members. We are very much experiencing a new world order that values leaders like Chavez of Venezuela, Morales of Bolivia, Fernando of Brazil, Sonia Gandhi of India and Hamas of Palestine. This phenomenon now threatens Vicente Fox of Mexico and other world leaders who have become callous with their leadership positions and who have are effectively leading a disengaged electorate. In the context of the issues of the world - other than terrorism - leaders of countries are now more than ever recognizing the need to engage their citizens in “mental marketing” to win acceptance for their political and economic agenda. Engagement. In this context then it is worthwhile to explore the concept of engagement and see if there is any application to communities such as ours in Point Fortin. There are many published papers on this question of engagement but the following excerpt from the website of the Institute of Employment Studies is particularly enlightening. It states, inter alia, “What is engagement?The first step in our research was to investigate what HR professionals understood or meant when they used the term ‘engagement’. A clear view of the behaviors demonstrated by the engaged employee emerged: · belief in the organisation · desire to work to make things better · understanding of business context and the ‘bigger picture’ · respectful of, and helpful to, colleagues · willingness to ‘go the extra mile’ · keeping up to date with developments in the field. Engagement has clear overlaps with the more exhaustively researched concepts of commitment and organisational citizenship behavior, but there are also differences. In particular, engagement is two-way: organizations must work to engage the employee, who in turn has a choice about the level of engagement to offer the employer.”
The Drivers of Employee Engagement, Robinson D, Perryman S, Hayday S, IES Report 408 http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/summary/summary.php?id=408
Application to Communities. While this quote speaks primarily to the employee/employer relationship, it should be fairly obvious that there is real applicability to the citizens of a country and communities. Essentially we can conclude that if leaders of our communities, cities and country work to engage the citizens, then the citizens are less likely to exhibit protest actions and show greater alignment for development initiatives. Engaged Leaders For citizens to be engaged, leaders must of necessity make the time to consult them on their own development. As an illustration, if a young lady is engaged to a man who thinks that he alone knows what’s best for her and he “bosses” her around by telling her where to live, how to dress, when to bathe, when to go out etc. then soon enough the young lady will either leave such a man or “horn” such a man. The writing is on the wall, if as a leader's) you reject the views and opinions of your citizenry, then you do so at your own long-term peril. The days of a “few” deciding on the long-term betterment of the “many” are over. Hence the reason that people are unmoved, cynical and skeptical by the site preparations at Union Estate, or the signing of smelter agreements. They were not consulted and so what initial engagement previously existed is now wearing off and eventually the protests begin. The Farmer and the Obeah man. This reluctance by leaders and multinational corporate communication leaders to engage the citizenry is reminiscent of a story told years ago. It’s the story of a farmer who owned a huge estate, but after some years he found that his business of farming was not performing and his crops were not producing as well as he expected. In order to solve his problem he went to a village “Obeah” man for advice. The Obeah man told him to take four candles and - starting from one corner of his property - walk slowly along the perimeter of the property. At each corner he was required to place one of the candles until he had placed all four. The farmer was so desperate that he followed the advice the very next day and as he proceeded from one corner to the next he noticed that there were some holes in his fence that allowed pests and other animals to enter the farm and destroy his crops. By the time he had completed the entire perimeter, he had witnessed a series of problems with his farm. He realized immediately that if he fixed these problems, his farm would do better. As the year passed the farm did much better, not because of the candles on the corner, but because the farmer walked the field more regularly and listened to people who worked for him. This story illustrates that there is a lot to be gained when leaders deliberately seek to engage their citizens. There is an inescapable need to walk the perimeters of our communities and recognize that the issues faced by the populace are real to each of us and therefore we demand engagement of the issues.
Insulting In the world of relationships, engagement leads to marriage - an even closer union. How different the population of Point Fortin would have been if we were engaged on the destruction of our beach at Clifton Hill, on the construction of world scale plants and smelters, on the building of long term tertiary education institutes and the development of our roads and access networks. How insulting to wake up one morning and read in the newspaper that some have decided we are a cultural capital when all around us are heavy petrochemical industries. As citizens, we long for leaders who; · are committed to courtship and engagement and who will talk to us with tears and not teargas, · whose only rubber are their shoes and not their bullets and · will talk to us before signing MOU’s and not talk to us about signed MOU’s. · loves us enough to be engaged to us.
Fitzroy Harewood.
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