Many are questioning the absence of an effective communication strategy from the NDP. It is one thing to speak about an absence of a strategy, but it is another thing to ill advise a population taking it to the brink of a Public Health disaster.
The advice by Hon. Isreal Bruce to eat African snails in SVG without the technical input of the Ministry of Health or Technical team from within the Ministry of Agriculture is nothing short of recklessness and should be a matter for open rebuke from the Minister of Health.
Last year, governments across the region stated established protocols noting that snails should not even be touched without using gloves and should not be consumed. Today, after a visit and advice by a restaurant in Nigeria a Minister advises a nation that this is tasting like conchs, eat away!
If the Minister took the advice of his Chief Agriculture Officer and Plant Protection, he would know that it is senseless to encourage people to eat snails in an environment where the Ministry has an active programme to poison the same snails. In other words, a Minister is from his platform of no scientific research offering culinary advice that can bring peril to any unsuspecting ear. Did the Minister even have the presence of mind to clear this with the Cabinet?
Did he speak to the Ministry of Health? Hon. Daniel Cummings would never allow such a conversation in Cabinet without asking if it was scientific. Was he advised by those baiting the snails with poison that this was unwise to say? Did he even do a simple Google search to realise that the Governments of Trinidad and Tobago and SVG gave national advisories against casual contact or consumption? It is not an issue of eating snails, since snails are eaten in many culture, Mr. Minister it is about being negligent by not researching the snails in SVG before opening your mouth.
This is not about partisan politics. It is another clear piece of evidence of a confused bunch led by no system of communication. When a Minister can take to a Facebook live and advise a nation to the brink of a National Public Health emergency; then solidifies it at a Press Conference where it is now bandied about as a joke showing a society in regression. I just pray that there is no citizen out there who will listen to this nonsense.
The final questions to the goodly Minister, do you think the snail you sampled in Nigeria came from an environment of active baiting with poison like in our situation; was it wild snails or farmed snails in a controlled environment? The country awaits the Ministry of Health to speak on this matter. If they do they open a widening crack in the NDP ineffective communication. If they don’t, it is a show of acceptance that the problem of ill governance has gone beyond being able to be fixed.
