MANY OF us were shocked to read that Merlene Ottey has tested positive for an anabolic steroid. I was particularly upset, because I am one of Merlene Ottey's great admirers, and I have always believed that she was one of the few track athletes who did not take performance enhancing drugs.

The use of anabolic steroids by track athletes began in earnest when East Germany was under communist domination. Especially in the case of their female athletes it is quite clear, in retrospect, that the East Germans were the first large-scale users, probably of testosterone.

I remember seeing pictures of their female athletes and noticing how muscular they looked. It is fairly clear that other nations began to realize that the competition required them to use anabolic steroids too. As time went on, the use of these substances became more sophisticated.

Nowadays Nandrolone is the steroid of preference, chiefly because, if used with care and at the right time, traces of it in the urine will have disappeared by the time a test is taken.

Frankly, I believe the use of Nandrolone by male and female track athletes is now the rule rather than the exception. It must have been almost impossible, in such a situation, for Merlene Ottey to resist the current trend. I fear that international sport is now permeated with steroids and that our much respected Ms. Ottey had become unable to avoid the taint.

It is noticeable that nearly every time athletes are tested positive, they loudly protest their innocence, and friends and supporters join in the protest.

Rather than doing that, it would be for better if all those nations and people participating in international sport finally admitted the widespread use of these anabolic steroids.

The only sport which now seems free of such use is tennis, which is probably our last remaining civilised sport. It is, therefore, for the athletes themselves and their associations to face frankly the fact that pharmaceutical suppliers are making their international contests a farce. No amount of testing will ever overcome the use of these steroids. That will have to be done by the athletes themselves.

Jamaican trade unions

I have had very little personal experience of trade unions. So perhaps I'm being unfair when I say that I get the impression that many of them are dinosaurs, still believing in conducting their business by way of angry confrontations.

Some time ago, for instance, it was a union that shut down the Goodyear factory in St. Thomas with the result that, instead of Jamaica manufacturing and exporting tyres, the Goodyear people and others now import them.

For nearly 30 years I owned and ran a farm employing about 70 or 80 people. My workers refused to join a union because, according to them, the delegates took their money and never gave them anything in return.

When I was contesting an election as a Federal Member of Parliament I found the absence of a union on my farm a bit embarrassing, so I pleaded with my workers to join the BITU. A few did, rather reluctantly, but the moment I won my election they immediately ceased to be members.

My only other experience in Jamaica was when I, and one other director, were in charge of Federated Pharmaceuticals in its early days. The driver of our delivery van stole quite a considerable sum of the company's money, and I fired him.

It turned out that he was a union delegate and the entire staff went on strike, demanding that he be reinstated. So I fired the lot and closed the factory, but told them that they would all get back their jobs (with, of course, the exception of the delegate) when they regained their sanity.

At the end of six weeks, they all came back to work, the union disappeared and we all lived happily together thereafter.

I had only one experience of trade unionism in England. After the war ended, I joined a plastics manufacturing firm called Lacrinoid Products Limited. At that time, there were a number of Jamaicans in England needing jobs and I employed as many of them as I could.

They were pleasant people and efficient workers. There was only one problem: They found that they could lunch more cheaply by eating a well-known cat food called Kitty Katt than buying the canteen food. As far as I would see there was nothing in it harmful to humans. Indeed I tried some of it myself and found it quite tasty.

But the English workers told me that they had no intention of sharing a canteen with "nigs" who ate cat food for lunch and that I was to forbid them the use of the canteen. When I refused, the English workers went on strike.

After the strike had continued for about a week, two union representatives came along to investigate the matter. I found them reasonable and charming and they both agreed with me that their members were totally out of order and ordered them back to work.

I told the Jamaican workers, however, that they were to avoid irritating their English colleagues by making too much of a production out of Kitty Katt.

So everyone went back to work, the Jamaicans continued to lunch on Kitty Katt, and everyone lived happily ever after, or at least until I moved to another job.

But I discovered that the English unions paid their members some sort of an allowance when they were on strike. I have never heard of that happening in Jamaica.

I understand that trade unions are supposed to keep strict accounts. I have never seen any of these. I suspect that such union dues as are collected in Jamaica are used solely for the support of the unions' officials. This must suit them very well for I am not aware that there is any shortage of union organisers.

(Taken from the Sunday Gleaner)