It is really amazing how every horribly tragic event in Paradise Island is invariably followed by a tediously moralising rebuke from journalists seeking to blame all of us for what is essentially a private disaster; the fact that the Virahsawmy family of Circonstance, St Pierre have not finished mourning the loss of their three children and the severe injuries to the other two has not stopped the sanctimonious pointing of the accusatory finger at all of us. We are now apparently ?collectively responsible? for the poverty of that family and the conditions of hardship surrounding their existence.

Wouldn?t life be wonderful if every tragedy could be explained by a Pavlovian response that disregards individual responsibility and places the blame squarely on the ubiquitous ?we?? I do not know about you, but I do get fed up with this ?pop? psychology approach to personal disasters that always seems to find everyone responsible for a tragedy apart from those directly involved in it.

A blame culture that transforms every act of individual carelessness and culpable negligence into one of helplessness apparently caused by an uncaring society reinforces a dependency mentality that indulgently ignores individual responsibility for personal actions.

As police inquiries are still continuing into the causes of this accident-arson, I do not intend to talk about the events of that night which directly led to the deaths of three children and severe injuries to two others. But one must perforce question the sense of parental responsibility that allows a father to leave five children under the age of eight on their own in a dark room lit only by the naked flame of a candle whilst he is apparently busy sharing a drink with his step brother.

One must question his sense of priorities that relegates the proper care and supervision of his children behind the need to reacquaint himself on a regular basis with the taste of alcohol. One must also question his sense of individual responsibility that allows him to bemoan his lack of employment in the orgy of self pity so prevalent amongst unemployed Mauritians at a time when the textile and construction industries have thousands of vacancies that can only be filled by Bangladeshi, Indian, and Chinese workers grateful for the chance to work, even if it means being thousands of miles away from their loved ones.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, one must also question his maturity and sense of duty that allows him to procreate at will without doing anything to relieve the underlying poverty that has already atrophied the life chances of his brood.

If you do not have enough today to feed x number of children, what makes you think that you are capable of feeding x +1 children in nine months time, especially if you insist on remaining unemployed and wasting money that should be earmarked for food on alcohol?

The Virahsawmy tragedy is a microcosm of the absurd mentality of helplessness that seems to have gripped the minds of a large number of our citizens living in poor conditions. No newspaper picture of a family in impecunious surroundings is complete without the image of a pregnant woman carrying a baby in her arms and a string of waifs hanging by her side, all standing self consciously in front of the hovel that passes for home and peering miserably at the camera.

Criminal waste of money

And every one of these unfortunate people will then recite the mantra that exemplifies learned helplessness and a dependency culture that is now endemic in our society: ?nou espere ki gouvernman pou capav fer kiksoz pou nou?. Who can blame them when the middle classes have cornered the market for government subsidies and are always on the look out for more freebies from governments that will splash our money liberally in order to secure votes at the next elections?

Nobody wants to do anything for themselves these days; everything has to be achieved with the help of the government. The middle classes will not buy a car unless the government removes all duties on it; the amount of money consequently lost on each car would have been sufficient to build at least one decent house for people like the Virahsawmy family.

Incompetent people who have been promoted way beyond their abilities are not satisfied with their Rs 150 000 to Rs 200 000 monthly salaries unless we also buy them a Rs 3 million car which, of course, has to be duty free; that is equivalent to another seven or eight houses that could have been built for every car bought as a status symbol in a farcical attempt to hide the gross incompetence of the newly appointed buffoon.

You make the calculations and you will soon realise that there is more than enough money available to build houses for the increasing number of families without a roof over their heads. Homelessness is the biggest crime committed by our politicians because none of them has the decency to target the money that is already available within the system as subsidies to those at the bottom of the social ladder instead of stuffing the mouths of the bloated middle classes with even more freebies.

Sithanen lost the moral high ground over his budget by drastically reducing the duty payable on luxury cars whilst knowing full well that the money lost by each reduction would have been sufficient to build several houses for our less fortunate citizens.

And what about the criminal waste of vast amounts of public money in financing all these so called ?missions?? The latest act of reckless indulgence by the Cargo Handling Corporation Ltd to attend a nonsensical three day conference in Australia cost over Rs 600 000, enough to build more than one house which would last a lifetime. Again, you make the calculations for the vast numbers of unnecessary missions that are funded entirely with our money every year and then see if you can restrain the intense desire to slap any politician who tells you that Paradise Island cannot afford to adequately shelter its more unfortunate citizens.

It is the excessive desire for more than is ever needed or deserved by the middle classes that fosters this atmosphere of helplessness and dependency by almost everyone in our society. Who can blame those on the margins of our society when they ask these simple questions: If rich people can get all that money from the government, where then is my share of the national cake? Why should a doctor get more for a five minute consultation than I could ever hope to earn for a whole day?s work? Why should I pay a teacher privately when he is already getting a good salary from public funds in order to provide free education for my children? Why should a rich person be exempt from paying any duty on his car when I have to pay VAT on almost everything that I can hardly afford to purchase?

What sort of moral framework underpins all our governments? actions in allowing part time chairmen of ?authorities? and ?corporations? to buy brand new Mercedes with our money whilst simultaneously asserting that there is no money available to build decent houses for the poor? If that does not make you angry, perhaps putting it in crude figures will at least prompt you to start questioning the moral fibre of our politicians: the money wasted on every new Mercedes for the parasites in our midst is more than sufficient to build at least ten houses; extrapolate that figure to all the limousines bought from public funds and you will not be able to avoid the conclusion that homelessness is a man-made disaster engineered by politicians with more ego than humanity or decency.

Basic parental duties

Let me get back to the original proposition that we are all somehow guilty for the circumstances that led to the tragedy in Circonstance. It seems to me that the only person directly responsible for that tragedy is the father who chose to leave his five young children unsupervised at night in a room with only a lit candle for company. Poverty has never been a sufficient reason for the abrogation of basic parental duties and responsibilities that demand the protection and nurturing of your own flesh and blood at all times.

The only people with an indirect responsibility for this tragedy are the politicians of all parties who never cease to promise the earth to voters in a country with limited resources; who prefer to give our money to those who least deserve or need it and who can sleep comfortably at night whilst being fully aware that their policies have enriched their friends and relatives and condemned more and more people to abject poverty; whose inhumanity deserted them a long time ago so that they cannot or are not willing to see that there is more than enough money already in the system that could be used to house an ever increasing army of the homeless.

No, I do not feel at all responsible for the parental fecklessness that is the main cause of the tragedy at Circonstance. But I do feel terribly angry at the vast amounts of public money thrown at self serving, pompous idiots whose only qualification resides in their family links to politicians. Many of them will soon get 3 months bonus (equivalent in many cases to the price of a new house) out of public funds to reward another year of incompetence and amateurism.

I hope they all choke on their Christmas turkey!

R.A.J.