This prompted a large team of officers to go undercover at the two cemeteries yesterday afternoon with the intention of apprehending persons suspected of having intentions to carry out a 21 gun salute for George.

Newsday understands police from the Northern Division, Inter Agency Task Force, Criminal Gang and Intelligence Unit, North Eastern, Port-of-Spain Division and Guard and Emergency branch were placed at strategic locations at Maracas, St Joseph and St Joseph to carry out searches and roadblocks in and around the vicinity of the funeral and areas close to the St Joseph cemetery.

At 2.30 pm yesterday, the body of George arrived at the La Rue Pomme RC Church at Maracas, St Joseph where a funeral service took place.

Inside the church were undercover police, while outside the church lawmen swarmed the area.

During the service, police carried out roadblocks stretching as far as Portof- Spain, San Juan and in some parts of Central.

Police also said they had received information that people believed to be members of gangs closely affiliated with George had planned to attend the funeral and as a last sendoff planned a 21 gun salute.

This prompted the police action yesterday but sources revealed people received information of the planned police activity and the gun salute was aborted. Police had expected to see some top gang leaders from Beetham Gardens and San Juan in the church service but none attended.

Last Thursday, George was executed, along with Shameel Ali, in the vicinity of the Maracas St Joseph Police Station by six gunmen. Police of the Maracas, St Joseph Police Station responded and said the station was also shot at by the gunmen. A police constable was shot in the head however, his injury was not serious.

Up until yesterday no one had been arrested for the murders of George and Ali.

Senior police officers said yesterday they believe the two graves were dug to confuse the police.

However because of the police activity this changed and George’s final resting place was at the La Rue Pomme Maracas St Joseph cemetery which is located four hundred metres from the La Rue Pomme RC Church.

According to a police report at about 8 pm the remains were found inside a house along Deonarine Trace, Couva. Reports said that the remains appeared to be that of man.

Police said that the corpse was clad in a grey t-shirt and blue pants.

The remains were ordered removed to the Forensic Science Centre by a District Medical Officer(DMO).

Investigations are continuing.

If we in the Hindu community in TT do not give serious thought to this requirement of modernity and, by extension, evolution, we run the risk of: (1) Being left behind in the march of time and progress.

(2) Many leaving our fold for a more modern and progressive way of life.

The re-codifying of Smrti for Yuga was always done by the Rishi- gana who were seers grounded in Sanatana Dharma. Today, however, we are faced with the terrifying prospect of it being re-codified by leaders of organisations who are grounded more in politics and power than in Sanatana Dharma.

In my view, it is indeed a retrograde step in this day and age to insist that the marriageable age for our children should be less than 18 years. We have a well established conventional agreement that an individual does not have the full capacity to make an informed judgment about who to vote for in an election (and many other judgments) until they have reached 18 years. How then can they make the most dramatic and life-changing decision about marriage? I fully support any law that will make the marriageable age 18 years or older.

To insist otherwise is Jurassic in nature and will make a relic of Sanatana Dharma in TT .

Swami Prakashananda via email

Various countries have been co-operating with the US on a voluntary basis, providing levels of available information back to the US under non-binding arrangements of the so-called Inter- Governmental Agreement for FATCA.

Presumably, this information is retrieved and shared without laws being flouted.

Here at home, the Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIE) Bill under consideration for enactment is meant to create binding mechanisms within our own jurisdiction, to access and manage information legally and be able to enforce that.

It would be essential to expand the TT Government’s investigative needs while protecting it in relation to its own citizens, with the removal of guaranteed constitutional rights. FATCA then is about the prosecution of US tax evasion and crime within the US jurisdictional regime. What the benefit to TT has been and would be still has to be shown.

Why should TT surrender more of our own rights at home? How much is the US contributing to defray the cost of this bureaucracy? Should Americans who own TT property internationally of whatever nature be taxed by TT ? And in that case, how will the US be accountable for returning equivalent information, on its own citizens and ours, to TT ? As anyone who has been audited by the Board of Inland Revenue can attest, the Government is not hindered in powers available to it already, in assessing wealth on an objective basis and enforcing the tax code here at home.

So another issue would be: are there laws in the US that obligate the US to return information to TT in the same way as the proposed TIE? And, does the proposed TIE address the problem of jurisdictional priority in the event TT has claims to try any US citizen, or Trinidadian? Actually, there is no formal treaty here between TT and the US and no real reciprocal obligation from the US to our nation.

Finally, will the TT banking system lose competitiveness in the evolving international banking system being bound to FATCA?

ELIAS GALY via email

You keep lamenting about the escalating crime situation with the hope that some miracle will take place overnight and the police will stop the bandits.

This has been your reaction to the continuous killings since you were elected.

By now you should know that the conservative crime plan is not working. By now you should know that no amount of talk, peaceful marches and prayers are going to have a dent on crime.

What’s your next move? You have to declare a state of emergency and let the police and the army get the criminals off the streets.

To put a stop to the everyday killings, the criminals must be stopped in their tracks. You need to put them behind bars.

You need to detain them indefinitely.

You need to mash up their criminal plans. You need to search without warrant and find their many guns.

Raffique Shah was on target when he wrote about the recent killings in front of the Maracas/ St Joseph Police Station, “This society has drifted to the edge of anarchy.”

Ronald John Diego Martin

This is according to Health Minister, Terrence Deyalsingh, who told the media yesterday at the IVCD head office in Cunupia, that the acquisition of the GIS and fogging machines is part of the division’s strategy in the fight against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

The decision to fast track the purchase of the GIS, Deyalsingh said, was due the absence of an information database at the IVCD.

With the new system, he said, technicians will be able to identify individual house and streets where breeding sites may be found.

The IVCD will work with the Met Office and Office of Disaster and Preparedness Management (ODPM), among others, to respond to outbreaks using predictive weather patterns, he said.

The mosquito, which is responsible for transmitting the zika, chikungunya, dengue and yellow fever viruses, Deyalsingh said, was public health’s “enemy number one.” The Aedes, he noted, “causes untold suffering, pain and, in the case of dengue, possible death. Also, in the case of the pregnant population, birth defects like microcephaly may also present itself.” Deyalsingh also expressed concern about the recent outbreak of yellow fever in Brazil where the current epidemic of zika started in 2014.

It is predicted, he said, that haemorrhagic dengue, which comes around every five to seven years, should hit the country this year.

“We don’t want people bleeding out. We want to save lives,” he said.

In an epidemiological update, acting Principal Medical Officer, Dr Keven Antoine, noted that confirmed laboratory cases of zika for 2016 was 717. Of this number, 462 were pregnant women. Tobago accounted for 41 cases.

The zika cases were mainly along the eastwest and north-south corridor in large population centres. “These are the urban areas where we expect to find the vector,” he said.

Chikungunya which entered the country in May 2014, Antoine said, recorded 340 laboratory confirmed cases in 2014. Cases reduced to 53 in 2015, and nine in 2016. There was a decline in dengue from 2014 to 2016. There were no cases of chikungunya or dengue recorded in Tobago last year.

It was noted, too, that the trend of dengue in the Americas over the last 20 years has been going up consistently.

While the trend in TT was much the same, Dr Naresh Nadram, Registrar, IVCD said, “In the last six years, since we have adopted the dengue IMS (Integrated Management Strategy) in 2011, we actually saw a significant decline – an 84 percent decline in TT over the last five to six years.” In addition, there has been no death from severe dengue in the last four years.

The IMS, according to Nadram aims to reduce morbidity, mortality, social and economic burden of vector borne diseases, and it is designed to strengthen prevention, and control programmes through inter-sectoral collaboration, education and community participation.

Sources yesterday indicated the leaking of Persad-Bissessar’s letter to Trump could undermine the work of the parliamentary joint select committee (JSC), which the Opposition demanded, to deal with the Tax Information Exchange Agreement 2016. The bill is critical to this country being FATCA compliant.

Imbert said,”The JSC on the tax information exchange bill, also known as the FATCA bill, is still meeting.” He continued, “It would not be proper to speak about this until the committee completes its work.” The committee is due to report to the House of Representatives on February 3. When Government bowed to the Opposition’s request for a JSC in the House on January 6, Imbert said that a vote will be taken on the bill on February 3.

Well-placed sources added, “The leaking of this letter while the JSC is still meeting, sets a bad precedent and could undermine the work of the committee. The committee comprises Imbert (chairman); Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi; Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young; Port-of-Spain South MP Marlene McDonald; Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh; Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie; Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon; Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat; Government Senator W Michael Coppin; Opposition Senator Gerald Ramdeen and Independent Senators Hugh Russell Ian Roach and Taurel Shrikissoon.

The January 13 letter, in which Persad-Bissessar asked Trump to state his position on FATCA, was not provided to Newsday. In the letter, Persad-Bissessar referred to comments, reportedly made by Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mark Meadows, about repealing FATCA. She indicated to Trump that the JSC was about to begin work on the bill and, “it would be very helpful for us to know if the relevant US law may soon be nullified either by legislative or executive action or both.” The Republicans have the majority in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

Justice Ricky Rahim granted to Davindra Maharaj and the Motor Insurance Bureau Association of Trinidad and Tobago leave to have the court review the decision of the State to levy a six percent tax on insurance premiums.

For years, all motorists who have been paying insurance premiums have also been paying money to the State to place in a special fund set up to pay damages to persons who suffer in accidents involving cars without insurance.

In 2015, the sum contained in the fund was in excess of $1 billion, but the State has not been able to disburse any funds from the fund because of a lack of the requisite legal instruments to authorise payments. As a result, the fund has simply stood dormant.

Maharaj, who is also an attorney, and the Motor Insurance Bureau are expected to file their application for judicial review on Monday and are seeking declarations that the direction of the Minister of Finance to permit the levying of insurance premium taxes was contrary to the legal purpose of the Miscellaneous Taxes Act which deprived Maharaj’s legitimate expectation to be taxed in accordance with its legal purpose.

They are also seeking a declaration that the State was unjustly enriched through the payment of insurance premium taxes and that the failure of the State to establish a Motor Insurance Bureau for disbursing funds to compensate victims of accidents caused by uninsured drivers, while it actively allocated funds, was unreasonable.

The group of victims of uninsured drivers also want the State to pay into the court, the sums collected under the Accident Victims Compensation Fund for the benefit of victims of uninsured drivers to be determined by the court.

Maharaj said for the period January 11, 2011, to December 31, 2015, he paid $5,456.21 in insurance premium taxes, which he is seeking to recover as restitution.

He also quoted from the National Budget Statement by the late Prime Minister Patrick Manning for the 2008 financial year in which he identified road safety as an issue of priority and proposed to use the proceeds of the insurance premium tax to establish a fund to compensate victims of uninsured drivers.

The pan body is also referring to Gadsby- Dolly’s statement earlier in the season when she said Pan Trinbago will no longer have sole control over the annual Panorama competition, in that gate receipts from its competitions and other revenue-generating activities will be collected by the National Carnival Commission (NCC), Pan Trinbago’s Public Relations Officer, Michael L Joseph, said in a statement to the media, “We are viewing the move by the Ministry and the NCC, as a hostile takeover of the Carnival interest groups.

After the sacrifice we have made throughout the years to make this industry the billion- dollar product that it has become, the powers that be, without any form of consultation with the Carnival stakeholders, is moving post-haste to upstage and restructure the people’s culture.” Joseph also said Pan Trinbago views the moves by the Ministry and the NCC as an infringement of the right to enjoy the fullness of “our heritage instrument” that was carved out through blood, sweat and tears by pioneers who suffered humiliation and disrespect by the very society who labelled them rogues and vagabonds and outcasts.

Given this fact, he said, the country must be aware of the risk of accidents which could result in loss of life and damage to equipment and the sea.

He added that business continuity is another consideration and any disruption, results in a lack of economic opportunity.

Given current global economic challenges, owners who have to deal with budget cuts may be tempted to delay or reduce maintenance of their infrastructure. Lashley made these comments in the feature address at the National Facilities Integrity Audit and Beyond workshop, held on the closing day of the 2017 Trinidad and Tobago Energy Conference, hosted by the Energy Chamber at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain.

The workshop was for the review of findings of the National Facilities Integrity Audit and present some of the general results, assumptions and conclusions of said audit which was conducted from July 2015 to April 2016, involving 30 companies in the oil and gas sector. The audit was commissioned following two significant oil spills in 2013 and 2014.

Graeme Pirie, Managing Director and Country Manager of DNV GL Trinidad and Tobago Limited, which conducted the audit, said there were a few companies which did not show willingness to improve. He added that many companies have a personal safety programme which is often not separate from the asset integrity programme.

He explained that a confidential report on the programme had been prepared for the ministry and each of the companies involved had been given a report on how they did in the audit.

He said these individual reports had information on the particular company and others in the sector but did not name the other companies.

Lashley said that instead of delaying maintenance, companies could work collaboratively through such industry- wide initiatives as the National Facilities Integrity Audit and share information among themselves.

He said that before the audit, a preliminary review within the ministry found varying degrees of asset integrity management levels; and that the AIM levels varied significantly from organisation to organisation.

Even within organisations there was a lack of thorough understanding of the AIM project in each organisation; a lack of proper risk ranking and prioritisation within each organisation to determine whether to repair or replace an asset. He said loss of containment can have catastrophic effects leading to potential user accidents with multiple fatalities as well as significant economic and environmental damage.

He said the ministry had seen some of the results of the AIM project and it was clear that Trinidad and Tobago still has some way to go to developing and implementing thoroughly effective asset integrity management programmes for all facilities and operatives within the oil and gas sector.

He said the national vision for this country’s TT asset integrity management is for it to enhance an active and competitive centre for oil and gas exploration and production and petrochemical industry development and see Trinidad and Tobago’s asset integrity management on the same level of such major oil and gas producers as the United Kingdom; Norway and Australia.