This has to be the saddest week of our history. We are sending eleven coffins out. We have kept one for ourselves.

Grief is not the monopoly of any country. Inside these coffins are individuals who came to us on their two feet, running away from misery and signing up for sacrifice. Their families must have taken loans they could not afford to pay back to send their loved ones over, with the hope that one day their children would have a better future than what now looms ahead of them.

Workers such as these come to do the most arduous and physically demanding jobs; jobs we do not want to do; jobs too hard for us or below our dignity. We open our borders to them but not our arms. So they remain forever in the shadows. When we reach for those trousers or unfold that cotton shirt, we never give thought to the small starving hands which sewed and folded them. We never think of the hands which last touched them.

We snigger at these immigrants. They look the other way. We laugh at them. They smile back in embarrassment. They do not complain. At the back of their minds are the few pennies they will save to send back to families worse off than they are.

To these families today, we are sending coffins back in return. Youth and health obliterated by our biggest murderers – our roads. The journey stops here. Too short. Too unfair.

Has anyone thought of the distress of the families when they hear the news? Does anyone realize what a terrible thing it is not to be able to have a body to grieve over? Does anyone understand what it must feel like to have one’s hopes shattered through one single phone call? If so, it is our responsibility to ensure that these bodies get back to the grieving families in the shortest possible time and to see to it that the widowed women and orphaned children who have lost their bread winners are adequately compensated to enable them to have the better tomorrows their deceased relatives were longing for. It is in times like these that we measure the extent of the civilization of a country.

Hebdomas Horribilis! A terrible week indeed for we are also sending another coffin to the other side of the world. A young woman, in the prime of her youth. She lacked nothing and came over because she could afford the beauty of our island as well as the peace, quiet and security our brochures promised her. She came with a loving husband who had committed to her and to whom she had committed. Hand in hand they walked into our island. He goes back clutching a coffin full of destroyed beauty, youth and promises which will never be fulfilled.

Greed, not her own but that of others, killed her.

As a nation we woke up in shock and we are covered with guilt, shame, embarrassment and sorrow. Our roads and our greed failed these people. No sorrow we are likely to express will make up for the loss the families must feel. To all these families: we are sorry. We share in your grief and sense of loss. I know these words will change little but they express the feelings of the whole nation.

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