The 2014 hurricane season has come and gone without any major disturbance over Jamaica. For that we are grateful. The tailend did leave us with a last lick, however, as we experienced heavy rains across most of the island.

Minister Robert Pickersgill would probably describe last week’s incident as another storm in a teacup. Flat Bridge and the gorge have been the scene of many horrendous and tragic incidents caused by flooding. Some would have happened under his watch as minister of transport.

There is a plaque on the northern corner of Flat Bridge which marks the heights where the river reached in 1933, 25 feet above normal levels. The water may have since risen higher, but what is true is that every year there has been some tragedy recorded and many a driver will be happy to see the back of Flat Bridge when the north-south highway is completed.

In that case, however, we will certainly miss the beauty of that scenic drive through the gorge, especially during the early-morning flirtation with the mist and dew. Before the first bridge was built, said to be around 1770, it attracted nature lovers and writers who would wander through the lush hills and valleys and wax poetic about the vegetation comparable, they would sing, to the Welsh and Scottish highlands.

The original roadway, a dirt lane that extended the north-south pathway for foot soldiers and buggies and carts, was known as the 16-Mile Walk leading from Bog Walk to Spanish Town. The bridge, of wooden construction, was built by slaves drawn from the 16 sugar plantations around Bog Walk. Many of these poor individuals lost their lives while mining sand, gravel, limestone and marl to secure the bridge.

This has led to the intriguing and haunting story that every Good Friday the ghosts of the departed slaves gather at the northern end of the bridge to commiserate with each other, and to scare modern travellers. As I have warned before, if you see a sign saying take Sligoville or Barry on a Good Friday, take it. For more reasons than one.

Saturday’s storm in a teacup over the gorge has come and gone. Will the other storm, the Outameni debacle, also disappear as hoped for by Minister Pickersgill? Hardly likely, in my opinion, because what will stick permanently in the mind will not be the facts which are being deliberately obscured, but the arrogance, stubbornness, contradictory statements, inconsistencies, and the circling of the wagons.

Mark you, much of it was sheer entertainment and comic relief. Already we miss board member Percival LaTouche emerging from some meeting to read to us the Acts of the Apostles in his engaging returning-resident twang. Last exposure had him at a press conference sticking as close to NHT Chairman Easton Douglas as any line of Avon products.

Consider that he was described in one newspaper as a PNP activist (on the board), while to Easton’s right was none other than the treasurer of the PNP, Norman Horne. Nowhere except in an Alice in Wonderland scenario could you find such an act of indiscreet audaciousness carried out in the name of independent thinking and responsible management.

It is this kind of behaviour and action which led to instances like that imbroglio involving the Press Association of Jamaica and Jamaica House. I wonder what would have happened if a microphone was removed at a press conference from a John Maxwell, or a Wilmot Perkins, or even a young Barbara Gloudon, or a Myrthe Swire of the 1960s, those great champions of press freedom?

Which makes me wonder, what on earth is a board doing running things and micromanaging the NHT affairs? Surely this must be an embarrassment, and a waste of time for the very fine and professional administrative staff of the Trust, who have been hired to carry out the business of the Trust. The staff is comprised of top-quality, first-class accountants, managers, lawyers, engineers, evaluators, real estate professionals, who know how to do their work.

Just think, instead of being allowed to concentrate on their jobs and on the value and wisdom of purchasing unrelated entities like Outameni, they have to contend with not four, not seven, but all of 15 board members who obviously dictate what the policies and practices should be, regardless of whether they make common business sense or not.

Who provides these board members with the authority to make management decisions on Housing Trust matters? And what are they earning from their adventures around the board table? Subsidies, travelling, lunches, any emoluments here? At first we were told that the chairman only visited the Trust occasionally, did not have an office, was not provided with a car, and was not an executive officer. Is that still the case? Speak up, someone; perhaps Mr Latouche.

Board members are anathema, especially when they take themselves and their duties too seriously. It is said that a camel is a horse designed by a board. Do you get my drift, even while you laugh?

Years ago when I worked at the Jamaica Tourist Board as a young public relations officer, I never saw the minister of trade and industry who had the tourism portfolio, the Hon Robert Lightbourne, visit the Tourist Board offices on Harbour Street. Nor did we ever see him going on travel agent familiarisation tours abroad, leading all types of jazzy hotel and JTB delegations to every single conference and jaunt as is done now by contemporary tourism ministers.

Minister Lightbourne appointed a board in the 1960s that had enough confidence in the administration of the organisation not to interfere with the management and strategies and successful programmes of the paid professional executives.

Of course, the director was none other than John Pringle, a shrewd, successful and internationally accomplished Jamaican entrepreneur whose stewardship more than justified the choice for such a critical position. Tourism earnings tripled in the first three years of his tenure, and many of the creative programmes and systems that he introduced are still being implemented almost 50 years after his retirement.

Pringle himself tells the story in his autobiography of how he was reluctant to take the job as the first director of tourism when Lightbourne made the offer in 1963.

“Both Lightbourne and Bustamante knew that my sympathies lay with Norman Manley and the PNP, so I was hesitant to take up any job that would have me under the spotlight for any political party indiscretion, real or imagined, by the Labour Party Administration.

“In trying to convince me, Bob told me that Prime Minister Bustamante knew of my PNP background and lineage, but nevertheless considered me to be the best man for the job.

“The issue was settled one night when, at the opening of the Plantation Inn Hotel in Ocho Rios, Bustamante came across to me and said, ‘John, you are a well-known Comrade, but I want you as director because we trust you’.” Simple as that. The rest is history.

How different to the kind of résumé of party interests that determine board and management appointments in today’s Jamaica.

I had my own experience with board membership as a young man when I was appointed to a national body. My first board meeting was an eye-opener. The committee was stacked with party-in-power loyalists who spent most of the meeting selling tickets for their respective constituency fund-raisers.

My colleagues must have thought I was some sort of creature from outer space because I didn’t have any tickets to sell and didn’t join in their discussions on party fortunes and plans. In fact, after a while they would gather in clusters and leave me estranged.

Occasionally they would give me a cut-eye, to my great amusement, and it wasn’t long before I stepped down, no doubt to the relief of the chairman who must have been wondering how this little spy came into the tent.

Earlier in life I learnt an important lesson about meetings that may well be instructional for members of the NHT board and others. As a teenager I was elected president of our local Anglican Young People’s Association at the parish church. The rector was Rev Neville deSouza, who had decided that the traditional structure of the church committee should be changed by introducing young people with fresh ideas.

In due time I was invited to sit on the Harvest Supper Committee, only to discover that there was a falling out among members as Miss Ada was refusing to make the ice-cream this year because some member had dared to criticise her recipe last year, while Miss Edna, equally displeased, stuck out that she would have nothing to do with the catering committee this time around.

Sitting beside me was a building contractor who was also a newcomer (I believe they had plans to get him to build the manse) and who had a speech impediment. With the hot debate circling the table, Peter whispered something to me and without hearing or understanding what he was saying, I nodded yes, to shake him off. In a flash Peter was on his feet, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Neita and myself have decided to contribute a goat,” he said.

Talk about shock and surprise. I yelled “What?!”, but it was too late, as the wife of the custos was already giving thanks and praise for the new members’ generousity and selflessness, and the committee was applauding us for the offer. I saw my first month’s salary going up in smoke, but had learnt a lesson that you must listen carefully before agreeing to anything at a committee meeting, otherwise the minutes can hang you.

I suspect the NHT board members are going to find out the truth of that pearl of wisdom when the minutes of the Outameni case are tabled in Parliament.

There is an intriguing and haunting story that every Good Friday the ghosts of departed slaves gather at the northern end of Flat Bridge to commiserate with each other, and to scare modern travellers.