From what I gathered, whilst on the one hand, we want the fish hub to be one of the pillars of our new economic development, our civil service, on the other, is lagging behind to providing the minimum requirements for the entry of our products to the targeted market: the European Market.

Not only do we have to produce the right product at the right price and at the right time, the exporter must ensure that the products are certified for the importing country. Has the authorities done there job properly? How do we stop irresponsible parties to mar our destiny?

This reminds me of an experience, which occurred many many years ago. After grueling rounds of interviews, this Youngman full of hope and high spirited, got a letter confirming to him that he had been selected out of some twenty candidates and was awarded a scholarship under the Commonwealth Scholarship scheme. He was asked to call in the Ministry of Education to pursue the formalities and to complete the Common Wealth applications.

There I was, aged 20, happily registering myself to a Canadian institution to study Heating & Refrigeration at a tertiary level at College in Canada. There were then 2 other awardees. The first was awarded a bursary to study music and the second fellow a similar scholarship in Aeronautics. I had even got the acceptance from the College which was in Laval Quebec.

Came September which was the moment to finalize the departure, the government officer, Mr. Telescourt told me that there was a problem. What turned out was: the Ministry through of an over sight did not file in the document in time for our applications to the Common Wealth secretariat to process the requests. After much exchanged of telexes (in those days) The Commonwealth secretariat conceded only the Aeronautics study as the funds were reallotted to countries that requested more scholarships and were on time.

This is the story of how an administrative mistake crushed all the hope and tomorrow of an enterprising budding yougman. Let us hope that the administrative shortcomings of the authorities will not in turn crush the tomorrow of our budding Fish hub.