“Napa” is the Creole word for “There is none”: Listening to the man in charge of the Seychelles Trading Company (STC) is like listening to a broken record. The guy never stop repeating himself whenever he comes on national television – Mr. Editor allow us to pass the following message to this man: “Sir, these television in our living rooms belong to us and they are in our homes – don’t come in our living room to disrespect us in our house – have some respect next time – we are sure you know what we are talking about”.
The last time it was to tell us the story about the flour which somehow never reached Seychelles by some amazing circumstances. Twice now the cargo ship bypassed Seychelles but the flour still did not reach our country the day he said or promised it will. As things are at present he should refrain from making promises he knows he simply cannot keep.
It has been now a long time since he said government will ensure that (before it was SMB) now STC will have sufficient stock of essential commodities. He knows that government at most times has hardly been reliable so why does he keep counting his chickens early? When they are always late to hatch and sometimes it does not hatch at all.
At the time of writing this article there was no oil, no milk and no flour and they are all essential commodities. So what went wrong this time? Have we gone back to the “Napa” land? In the meantime, prices keep going up or are they hiding these goods until the prices increase and then put them on the shelves for a bigger profit? A few shop owners do it all the time maybe STC has caught on – And by the way we know of one particular vehicle and spare parts importer who is known to import parts, which he himself does not sell to the public at his spare parts shop at Providence. When people come for spare parts for a particular vehicle – his staff have been instructed to tell customers that we do not have these parts, but we know of a place that does. They send you to that place where boss has deposited all the parts to be sold at a rip-off price.
Surprisingly nobody has come forward this time to explain the price increase as did the Head of PUC. The irony of that news that day was while he was explaining that electricity will go up yet again because of the increases in fuel - right after that in the international news, SBC showed that fuel prices had actually gone down by 20 US$. Maybe that was done on purpose to show how our managers can sometimes mislead the Seychellois public especially through television interview – with the express desire to con viewers - but I hope they have not forgotten that they have only succeeded in fooling only some people for some time, but not all the people all the time.
So while all this is going on Seychelles is going down in rating according to international media outputs from B to CCC, from CCC TO –CCC and from –CCC to SD. It is believed that we have hit the bottom of the rating barrel. The only problem is that for most of us this is “Greek” and SBC journalists at most times hardly seek an explanation of what it means for the common people like us. But what is clear always is the way the people being interviewed will explain how it is not really a problem but simply a misunderstanding and “wait for it” their favorite line nowadays “Partou Dan Lemonn y koumsa” - What a load of cob wallops. Can Afif please start giving us the real issues instead of the cover-up his institution is engineering on behalf of the government? Don’t you have any shame Afif???
In any case at this point in time Seychellois are keeping very much in touch with what is going on in our country and there will come a time when our leaders are going to see that Seychellois are fed up with their agony aunt stories.
(Contributed)
