According to reports officers under the supervision of Superintendent Boxhill and led by ASP Ajith Persad and including Acting SGT Anthony Williams and others, carried out the massive operation in the city which saw several drug dens being raided, as well as apartments where alleged illicit activities take place.

Officers detained 16 persons for a series of offences, including robberies, store breaking and larceny, burglaries, and others on outstanding warrants.

The exercise follows similar exercises being carried out in the city to deal with crime and other illegal activities.

Newsday understands that the days leading up to the Yuletide season officers of the Port-of-Spain CID will increase foot patrols and mingle with shoppers as a deterrent to any planned criminal activity.

Additionally, he said that they were two separate issues — conditional releases and pardon.

He said, “We have forged a relationship with the criminal justice sector, we have gone where no one has gone before, but not pardon only, but conditional release…Each case has to be looked at on a case by case basis. It’s not a simple exercise, and it’s much broader than issue of pardon.

Pardon applies to post conviction, and does not take care of those incarcerated beyond maximum sentence (10 years) in Remand Prison.” “I welcome the advocacy on the part of the Catholic Church.

The Ultimate decision has to be made by the judicial officer who will be guided by the Director of Public Prosecutions as it relates to conditional release.

(Nonetheless) Pardon and mercy are separate issues that are also receiving attention.

He explained that the process requires a lot of vigorous work and is “still subject to Cabinet and judicial review”.

The event was held at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain.

Maharaj was awarded “Master Entrepreneur of the Year” and will be representing this country next year in Monaco at the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year. In his acceptance speech he thanked the organisers for the “tremendous acknowledgement” of what his company has achieved and will continue to achieve.

He said that 37 years has been a “long haul” and the company was started with the dream of providing makeup for multicultural women and a vision to create a premium brand that could compete with international brands.

He reported Sacha Cosmetics is now seeking to get into the India market and get access to a billion people of different skin tones.

Also at the event Label House Ltd won the inaugural “Internationally Known…T&T Owned” award, Jenny’s on the Boulevard owner Jennifer Dan Sharma won the “Winning Women Award”, online grocers Market Movers beat out Anya Ayoung Chee Ltd. and Cocobel Chocolate for the “Emerging Entrepreneur” award and former Furness Company chairman Ignatius Ferreira and late former Caribbean Chemicals founder Joe Pires Snr were inducted into the Business Hall of Fame.

Chamber President Robert Trestrail in his opening remarks commented on the Central Bank report that this country’s GDP had declined by 6.7 percent. He said that it was no better occasion to celebrate the success of people.

“Because out of crisis there is opportunity,” he added.

He also spoke of the economic situation local businesses face.

“We have been confronted by the unstoppable and powerful external forces such as globalisation, low oil prices and lower manufacturing costs by countries like China, India and Latin America.

Combined with our own economic constraints, these forces meant for many of you, the urgent need to restructure and to employ creative approaches to the way we do business.

And yet, here we are, in an atmosphere that is truly befitting of the esteemed awardees and guests in attendance, showcasing those who, despite the challenges, have excelled and delivered exceptional performance in the sphere of business,” he said.

In a release it was reported that “thanks to the unending determination and passion of former Red Steel co-owner, Jon Talarico and the Trinidad and Tobago Association for the Hearing Impaired/ DRETCHI, citizens of Trinidad and Tobago will receive the gift of hearing at no cost to them thanks to the amazing work of Starkey Hearing Foundation”.

“Because of the commitment of the Association and the unwavering support and leadership of Starkey Hearing Foundation, thousands of citizens who experience hearing- loss are going to receive the gift of hearing they may not have been able to afford.

Given the challenges here in the local economy, it is a true gift and blessing that The Starkey Hearing Foundation are willing to undertake such an endeavour,” Talarico stated Derek Johnson and Julia Lis, Starkey Hearing Foundation Development Directors for the Caribbean Region, stated: “Starkey Hearing Foundation are fortunate to have the opportunity to help those in Trinidad & Tobago with hearing loss that will improve their lives. This is not just a one-time event, but the start of the WFA Community- Based Hearing Health Care programme that will support ongoing education, after-care and empowerment tools for patients”.

Bill Austin and Tani Austin, co-founders of the Starkey Hearing Foundation, have cared for more than 1.1 million patients and provided 1.9 million hearing devices in more than 100 countries. According to the release Starkey Hearing Foundation gives the gift of hearing to people in need around the world.

“Hearing is a vehicle to reflect caring and to improve lives of individuals, their families, and communities,” the release stated.

“It is with the strong determination of Mr Talarico and T&T Association for the Hearing Impaired that this project will be possible to take place in Trinidad. Our goal is quite simple-to make sure we are able to assist and help everyone in need here in Trinidad and Tobago.” Also in the release the Trinidad and Tobago Association for the Hearing Impaired / DRETCHI wishes to inform the public that regular services of hearing test, servicing of hearing aids, moulding and hearing aid fitting will be suspended from November 15-18 for a training mission with staff and Starkey Hearing Foundation. All regular services will resume on November 21.

In a statement, the group said its goal was to establish Sex Offender Registration systems throughout the Caribbean region that will work alongside the US International Megan’s Law to end Child Sex Trafficking.

The CCASC also promotes other policies that will help reduce sex crimes such as victims support systems.

The CCASC has already drafted an international agreement that once finalised and passed by the nations of Caricom would establish a regional sex offenders registry and national sex offenders registries in every Caricom country, the statement said.

THE MINISTRY of Social Development and Family Services has distributed a draft document, which is set to replace the 2004 policy for people with disabilities.

Various disability groups are carefully examining this draft.

The consensus is that this document, which seems to have many voices, simply does not set the right tone.

It certainly begins well, and gives careful attention to the fact that Trinidad and Tobago has now signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But even as the scribes outline the meaning and implications of the convention, and in particular its general principles, there is a sense that the drafters have not done enough homework.

After all, even in the preamble the statistics are obsolete and wrong.

The unthreading of the convention’s general principles becomes a major issue when interpretation falls short of both clarity and contemporary relevance as in the explanation provided for the inherent principle to have respect “for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities.” The word “evolving” is key here.

This concept entails recognising that perceptions concerning the potential of children with disabilities will also evolve over time. This means that barriers to education and to achievement must continue to be pushed and as children prove their potential, policies and services must adapt.

Think of how little was expected of a child with a disability in the past and how education policies and services all over the world have enabled people with disabilities to learn and to prove how much they can do. It is possible that this is what “supporting children’s maturation, autonomy and self- expression” means. But the core idea is somehow lost.

Of course, many of the flaws of the document are hidden by language that does more to confuse than clarify and is often vague and without specifics. Take for example: “Sensitisation activities undertaken to raise awareness and inform persons with disabilities and other target groups on the convention and the rights it includes.” Why, one asks, is it necessary to have sensitisation activities for people with disabilities? Is this not needed for those who are not aware and not disabled? Continuing to look at the section that advocates the raising of the level of public awareness, the list includes “genetic screening”.

Given that abortion is not available in this country if a defective foetus is discovered, then this seems pointless; but again, one might also ask whether the ethics of eugenics also needs to be discussed, as is now happening all over the world.

Who decides whether a baby born with a disability is worthy of life? Who determines what is the capacity for happiness or fulfilment for that child? There is a grave lack of focus in the section dealing with access to the built environment.

We are told that there should be “development of an environment that is barrier-free and accessible for all.” Will the Government ensure that pavements are fixed so that the blind and visually impaired do not fall? This imprecision of language and intent is compounded by the fact that the section begins with a mention of the problems faced by people with intellectual disabilities, but makes no suggestion as to how these services may be provided.

Should there perhaps be a transport pass which allows a person with an intellectual disability to travel with a companion as they access sporting, educational, work or social amenities and facilities? Nonetheless, the appended action plan includes the unrealistic goal of adapting in three to five years, all public and private recreational, sporting and cultural facilities to accommodate people with disabilities.

The real issue that critics have in looking at this policy document is the deep sense throughout that people with disabilities should focus on vocational skills and not expect realistically to gain academic success or meaningful work. This suggests that the drafters themselves have not come out of the dark ages.

One fundamental lack, since this is a document that seeks to achieve inclusion, is the absence of any hard commitment to giving assistance to all parents, mothers, who give birth to a child with a disability.

The authors seem to be oblivious to the cost of caring for a child with a disability.

There is a stated aim to dissuade and hopefully dismantle institutional care, but this means that parents must be given the capacity to care for a child at home. This takes money. It is not enough to meanstest assistance. What is needed is positive discrimination that will offer such services free of charge regardless of income and to put in place measures to prevent fraud and bobol.

While much is suggested by the draft there is no mention whatsoever of a budget allocation.

Will the Government actually provide funds for these services? These budgetary needs are first of all in the area of education, and in particular mainstream education.

No amount of talk and no policy will accomplish the enrichment of the lives of people with disabilities unless the education system that supports these aims provides a disability-specific education and this will take money. What is also fundamental to inclusion is a system that will encourage employers, both in the private and public sectors, to hire people with disabilities.

Again this has budgetary implications and should take the form of incentives or grants.

Hence he promises that workers who lost their jobs, say, in coal mines because of the fear of climate change, will be reinstated and the mines reopened.

Also he will build a wall between Mexico and the US to prevent illegal immigration — an influx of which into the US will threaten the jobs, increase competition, of the lower paid.

The President-elect will also renege on international trade agreements, eg North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and high tariffs will be placed on imported goods from Mexico and China; he will scrap the emerging Pacific Trade Agreement and will do whatever it takes to force US companies to return their manufacturing to the US particularly from China and Mexico, again by import tariffs. The ill effects of globalisation, according to Trump, will be reversed. The US will become great again.

Indeed, the figures do show that the number of manufacturing jobs in the US increased in the years after NAFTA (1994). But there was a dramatic fall-off after 2000, when it dropped from some 20 million to the present figure of 12 million. Trump and Bernie Sanders blame China for putting US workers out of work because of cheap labour. But there is a more fundamental factor, technology: robots, artificial intelligence, machines are also replacing workers.

This loss of manufacturing jobs would have happened regardless of trade globalisation.

Recently I wrote an article, “When the robots do the work”, in which I referred to the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is being driven by massive automation, cheap sensors, immense connectivity, synthetic biology that are all having a revolutionary impact on how we do business, on how the economy works; more so its impact will increasingly be the polarisation of labour as the low-skilled jobs are automated and the same spreading to the middle class.

Schumpeter, a celebrated economist, told us this long ago when he declared that a sustainable economy is about creative destruction driven by man’s inventiveness in which firms will become obsolete and die, and are replaced by new ones doing both existing things differently and more efficiently and new things — for example with the advent of the automobile the blacksmith trade became obsolete; the blacksmith lost his job.

In the US now a great shift is taking place.

In the past workers moved from the fields into the factories. Now, in this Fourth Industrial Revolution, they are moving from factories into construction, healthcare centres, service counters. The fastest growing jobs in the US are now nurses, personal care aids, cooks, waiters, retail sales people, construction workers, operation managers — all jobs that computers are incapable of doing.

What globalisation has done is simply to speed up the current great shift.

What Trump intends to do will not reverse the technology, nor will it hold back the revolution. In fact the imposition of large taxes on Chinese and Mexican goods imported into the US could put that economy back into recession — making many items more expensive for the US working class and encourage global trade wars. Many seem to forget that Trump’s tariff scheme was tried before in the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on some 20,000 imported goods into the US.

According to Ben Bernake, “Economists agree that the Smoot-Hawley Act and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the then global depression.” Indeed, some manufacturing jobs have been replaced by others and the US economy is close to full employment.

Surely there are some replaced workers who are near retirement age who are too old to be retrained, or change jobs. There are others who are ignorant of the dynamics of the economy in which they strive to survive.

However, with the reticence of the US intelligentsia to talk to the people of the US, Trump and Sanders took advantage of fear and ignorance of the working class for political gain.

The Government today, just as in its many past incarnations, has been only offering “talk” and “plans” through hosting conferences on crime.

Absolutely nothing appears to be happening.

It seems the Government is treating with crime in the same way it treats with our external economic shock caused by the precipitous fall in the price of oil. In the case of oil and gas prices, it is praying that these go up.

Regarding crime, it is holding national days of prayer to pray that the level of criminality goes down. Apart from that nothing seems to be happening save a few paid political advertisements. These ads try to make us believe that somehow taxpayers are responsible for the escalation in violence and murders just as it blames the last government for the PNM’s fiscal illiteracy.

This state of affairs is entirely and completely expected once there is a PNM-led government. The PNM has installed its political implants in quite a few State institutions.

With their help and the help of one or two journalists, the Government has been “encouraged” to approach the UN, with the help of the US, to dispatch to Trinidad its “International Commission against Impunity”, as happened in Guatemala.

The commission had the mandate to investigate corrupt security forces and political corruption. A Trinidadian reportedly is now at its helm. Why can’t the Government do what it is paid to do? The commission also made recommendations for the improved efficiency of the Judiciary.

Late prime minister Patrick Manning in 2005 requested the help of Scotland Yard. Did that help? The same PNM sent them packing. Trinidad has nothing but “organised crime” running its affairs. The PNM, either in its present incarnation or at any future time, cannot solve the problem of crime in this country.

We will continue to bear witness to official silence on issues of PNM corruption.

The non-appearance of police reports and the PNM’s indifference to this will continue.

People in high office will continue being above the reach of the law and they will continue their victimisation of whistle-blowers through calumny and smear campaigns.

The country will sink further into the miasma of anarchy and lawlessness.

Trinidad as we know it will continue to die while the PNM prevails.

STEVE SMITH via email

Instead of encouraging the youths and even the adults in the country to educate themselves or even writing about the plans for the youths of the country and the economy, “PNM would get votes like chili bibi” resonates through Joseph’s mind.

Just goes to show that picong, lambasting and character assassination are hallmarks of campaigning for certain parties when in reality they should be focusing on actual issues of national importance and bringing messages positive in nature to the national stage.

We are truly in a sad state.

WASIM ALI Curepe

The appeal was made on Saturday by Melissa Roberts, general manager of Pink Hibiscus Health Specialists which held screenings at its facility at 5 Adam Smith Square, Woodbrook.

“Forty five patients were diagnosed with breast cancer so far this year, seven were annual patients and one of these seven patients was twenty two years of age,” Roberts told Newsday.

There is a myth which many people believe that once you are diagnosed with breast cancer you will die.

“There is a 98 percent chance of survival once you detect the cancer early,” Roberts assured, again stating that in order to detect the cancer at an early stage, women should not wait till they are age 40 to get a mammogram done.

Many women defer the screenings due to the fear of pain but at this clinic the screening is not painful. Jyoti Deonarine, the mammographer stated, “I usually tell the patients they are coming for breast photography.” This clinic being the most advanced in technology in Trinidad and Tobago uses digital mammograms as opposed to the analog (film) mammograms.

The digital mammogram is quite similar to an X-ray, not much compression is used resulting in a pain free experience.

Pink Hibiscus Health Specialists together with Yoplait hosted comprehensive breast screenings at Pink Hibiscus Clinic, last Saturday, to bring awareness to the public about the fight against breast cancer.

Both organisations held a campaign in October, which was Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year, during which information on breast cancer was disseminated and 20 women were chosen and scheduled to receive the breast screenings.