Sad state of affairs

The Editor: As we reflect on the passing of the old year and as we welcome the new year we wish to thank our members and supporters for their contributions and endorsements of our positions. In 2006 we will continue to work more diligently to defend communities without a voice. In 2005 everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Our people were smothered by sporadic and premeditated, individual and institutional inhumanities and brutalities. Every category of our natural capital inventory was depleted unsustainably and without transparent accounting, and threats for further depletion are escalating. National and individual communities are on the run from a chaos that the State has failed to address.

Families and entire geographic populations are being terrorised and uprooted, often with State support. Every law has been weakened as Government continues to sidestep and bypass the law with impunity, and with a battalion of legal vultures who will pick the flesh from any objector. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been put at risk from gas pipelines that have been laid contrary to the only Internationally accepted code for safety, namely the American Petroleum Institute Codes (API Code 1104) and are at risk from major gas incineration. FFOS have risked a lot in 2005 and we will not be muzzled. FFOS will be in Court in January 2006 as British Petroleum (BPtt), and our beloved Government of Trinidad and Tobago move on us to collect 12 million TT dollars in costs for a Judicial Review in which the Court ruled that we were late, and that it would be prejudicial to halt the project to examine safety issues because 72 million USD were already spent by the energy company.

In 2006 it is hoped that Parliamentarians read the Bills and seek proper advise for intelligent debate, it is anticipated that Woodbrook will flood beyond any ones imagination, it is probable that we will loose innocent souls from gas explosions and that the NGC will not be held accountable, it is estimated that the mineral wealth will continue to be negotiated and sold behind suspiciously locked doors, it is predictable that Caroni will not be able to find a few thousand more acres, it is projected that the Environment Management Authority will continue to rubber stamp, applications which jeopardise the life of communities. Finally, it is expected that Panday will continue to become more irrelevant while Manning will serve himself first, as a shortsighted father would.

Gary Aboud
Secretary
Fishermen and Friends
of the Sea, (FFOS)
Trinidad; WI