The Phuket Club

Regarding Ralph Freeman and the Lazy Buggers Charter. When the restructuring took place and the new 'directorates' (an internal job and bonus creation scheme) were plucked out of thin air, a further possibly unintended consequence was released on the cut, writes Mick Fitzgibbons.

This is a whole new ethos, (nightmare spectre) is called the 'It's nothing to do with us club'. The club I believe was formed in Phuket Thailand.

Not allowed to touch that

Spot an issue on the canal side and try to get it remedied by talking to a trust employee. The new mantra is—'we are not allowed to touch that' or sorry—'its a mooring issue' or sorry 'its an operations issue'. I thought CaRT was supposed to be operating a joined-up management system. However in reality, CaRT operates a demarcation based system; a system with more rules to avoid doing work, than there are reasons to ensure it gets done.

When you talk to the employees and gain their confidence they feel that their hands are tied with the red tape of internal bureaucracy, led by managers that have little understanding of anything other than wasteful risk assessments and authorisation for tiny almost inconsequential repairs.

Frustrating

By way of an example. I came across a lock gate with a small piece of woodwork that had come adrift. There were several bankside staff eating their lunch on a boat moored nearby. I approached one of the staff to see if anything could be done. One of them started to talk about the frustrating process of reporting, organising, authorising, assessing, monitoring and documenting. He would report the item, fill in a form, someone would come out and assess the work, if he needed to use tools—a safety assessment would need to be carried out. Then the material to effect the repair would be ordered up, and he would some time later get the authority to do the work, which might happen next time he was in the area.

However, he had the tools and materials at hand, he had the time and the inclination to do the job. He had been doing the job for years. As he pointed out, he has a keen interest in looking after his own safety, which he felt was much more than someone else would have. He had enough materials already (left over from another job) he had nothing else to do at that moment and he had a young apprentice with him that he could have encouraged to do the small job to gain a bit of hands on experience.

Burdened down

Instead he felt he was burdened down with the overheads of form filling, safety inspections and a large dose of frustration generated by the whole system. So like everyone else, if you can't beat the system—you just join it. Essentially it becomes so much easier and less stressful to become a member of the 'Phuket' branch of the 'it's nothing to do with us' club.

Yesterday, I spotted a malfunctioning lock on a waste compound. People were stacking rubbish outside its door. I spoke to a CaRT employee, he said 'strictly speaking I'm not supposed to touch that'. He said 'look away for a moment'. Then he said 'Oh, it seems to be working okay now.' He winked and went on his way. The lock had been fixed in a moment . . . .