I hope they don’t pass a law forbidding it and/or introduce another steep tyrannical fine and jail for it, but I saw a picture of a cabinet meeting recently and I was shocked to see the mountains of paper being used for reports to be considered by the cabinet.
There were thick bundles, maybe t(h)ree stacks high for every seat and similar envelopes occupying a table in the centre with a similar number of stacks of paper.
As we understand it, a copy of a report must be sent to a cabinet minister, about 20 at the moment, so just do the math and you will see how much paper, ink and binding is used. I was horrified, since this means that so many trees had to be sacrificed to provide the base for this paper.
This is another scandalous departure from their previous principle of a thrust towards less paper. This government made campaigned on a point of reducing the carbon footprint through the “blue/green/yellow economy”, but they now seem to have turned on that as well.
Quite clearly, as we have seen , automation and computerisation means more paper, support personnel and upgardes to infrastructure and even more worrisome is that we have a Ministry of Digitisation and Artificial Intelligence which seems to have missed the boat, as the cabinet meeting is the best place to start and lead by example as to how much less paper can be used.
Just by the way, ultra frequent flyer Minister Dumbinic Smith can fly to some exotic destination across the world where there is no bombing the UNC supports for insight into a paperless model for Cabinet meetings.
Seriously, please save the trees, use less paper.
Stay up Trinidad and Tobago.
Linda Capildeo,
St James
