N Touch

BWIA flights on track

Despite the recent seizure of two BWIA aircraft by lessors, International Leasing Finance Corporation (ILFC) last week, some of  the airline’s scheduled flights for yesterday appeared not to have been affected. According to the departure and arrival monitors at the airport yesterday, BWIA flights to Georgetown, Tobago, Grenada, Toronto and Barbados were all scheduled to leave on time. When Newsday visited the airport at approximately 11 am, there were no long lines at the check-in counters, but instead, passengers seemed to have little trouble confirming their reservations and checking in. Passengers yesterday reported that they were not affected by either of the seizures of the aircraft, as they were not scheduled to travel to those destinations.  When we attempted to speak with airline personnel, we were advised to speak to management to find out whether there had been any cancellations by affected travellers.

Newsday was later told that the BW 606 scheduled to leave Piarco for Toronto at 1.05 am yesterday had been rescheduled to leave at 3 pm. No reason had been given for the cancellation. Further checks with the airline revealed an automated voice recording which advised concerned passengers that “The operation of this flight has been changed” and to please contact BWIA. Attempts to contact personnel at the BWIA counter all proved futile.

Four children injured in Rio Claro

FOUR children and a 29-year-old relative sustained multiple head injuries when a car slammed into a TSTT pole, crashed into a culvert and overturned in Rio Claro yesterday morning. Doctors said the children’s injuries could be life threatening. However the children were all conscious and resting in a stable condition at the San Fernando General Hospital. Among the seriously injured were Jagdesh Adhar, 29, of Deep Ravine Trace, Rio Claro, his daughters: two-year-old Asha, her sister Karissa, 11, and his nephews: Amit Moon, 10, and Dillon, 11. His nephews Sanjit, nine, and Vijay, seven, received minor injuries and were treated for lacerations and discharged.

Investigators said Adhar was on his way to buy doubles for the children and his brother when the accident occurred. Police reports stated around 9 am, Adhar and the seven children were proceeding west along the Naparima/Mayaro road in a white 180B, when on reaching the vicinity of Clear Water Gardens, another car overtook him causing him to swerve to the extreme left. As Adhar swerved, he lost control of the car, which ran off the road and crashed into a TSTT pole.  The pole split in two on impact. The car then slammed into a culvert, went 15 feet into the air and then landed on its hood.
Motorists who witnessed the accident pulled crying children and the bleeding man out of the mangled wreck.

They were rushed to the Mayaro Hospital where they were treated and the five seriously injured persons transferred to the San Fernando General Hospital. Asha, Sanjay and Vijay were treated and discharged. The fire service and officers of the Rio Claro Police Station including Insp Shaffiq Mohammed,  PCs Raufs Hosein, Shane Ramkissoon and Ken Lutchman visited the scene. PC Hosein is continuing investigations.

Foreign-used car dealers oppose new rules

There has been strong opposition from the Pre-Owned Automobile Deal-ers Association (PADA) to the imposition of a $100 tyre inspection fee for new and used imported vehicles. The Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) had previously indicated that in the interest of public safety, the tyres of all new and foreign-used cars would have to be inspected and certified before they can be licensed. Following meetings bet-ween PADA and the TTBS, dealers said that the $100 fee was too high and suggested that the tyres be certified at the point of origin.

Another grievance was that new car tyres would be inspected on the rim whereas foreign-used car tyres would have to be removed. The TTBS offered numerous reasons why these suggestions could not be considered. In response, the PADA has publicly expressed its discontent in a paid press advertisement. In the ad, the association accused the TTBS of allowing American and German dumped or discarded tyres to enter the country.  It also refers to Trinidad as, “the only country in the world that imports Japanese-used cars but does not accept their tyres.” PADA highlighted the environmental impact of this action, saying that perfectly good tyres will be dumped. Since the major refuse centre is not accepting tyres, they also questioned where they will be placed. The association has made a stern call to the TTBS to revisit this standard to include Japanese new and used tyres.

PIRG knocks banking Ombudsman

The recent appointment of Judy Chang as the Banking Ombudsman has been knocked by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). The post of Ombudsman was established on May 19. The Ombudsman will look at complaints which have already passed through the commercial banks’ complaint system but will not be dealing with general pricing of products, level of interest rates and granting of credit and other risk management policies. A media release from PIRG’s Chairman Trevor Hosten over the weekend, stated that Chang is not far enough removed from the banking system. Instead, Hosten said, the PIRG would have preferred an attorney, who had spent the majority of his or her professional life successfully defending consumers and ex-bank employees against banking misfeasance.

Snaggs orders evacuation of Gasparillo station

ACTING Commiss-ioner of Police Everald Snaggs yesterday gave instructions for the immediate evacuation of all officers at the Gasparillo Police Station, part of which caved in on Friday night. Snaggs said he gave the instructions to Cuthbert George, fac-ility manager of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TT-PS).  “The safety of the officers is paramount,” he said. The senior officer added that it was only on Thursday that he visited the Gasparillo Station and recognised the dilapidated conditions.

However, Snaggs assured the officers of that station that Government has plans in place to build a new station.  In the interim, however, the officers will be occupying a nearby facility. Snaggs said the current telephone numbers of the Gasparillo Police Station would remain the same and would not affect the general public. Reached yesterday, Police Welfare Ass-ociation president Insp Christopher Hol-der said the Gaspari-llo Station had been condemned and said the La Brea station is in a similar situation. “We are going to ensure that the La Brea officers are immediately removed.  It is in a very bad state,” Holder said.  Snaggs also said he expects to tour other police stations to examine their conditions.

Caribbean wins engineering award

THE SCIENCE of Tribology and Lubrication Engineering has earned Trinidad and Tobago and by extension, the Caribbean region, unique international recognition. This has come with the Caribbean Region Section of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication (STLE) receiving the 2003 Award, for contributing towards the Society’s Mission “to advance the science of Tribology and the practice of Lubrication Engineeering, in order to foster innovation, improve the performance of Equipment and Products, conserve resources and to protect the environment”.

The Award was presented in New York to Trinidadian Kuarlal Rampersad, chairman of the Caribbean Region Section. Rampersad said Friday: “It is a tremendous achievement for the Caribbean Section to be chosen from 40 countries worldwide”. The 2-year old STLE’s Caribbean Section, successfully hosted the 2003 International Tribology Conference, Exhibition, Education Courses and Young Engineer’s Forum in February this year at the Hilton Trinidad. The parent body thought that to execute the programme in only six months, was a mammoth consolidation of efforts by the Section’s Chairman, members, volunteers and corporate sponsors.

Dr Josiah Knight, outgoing President of STLE was impressed with the significant tasks accomplished by the relatively new Caribbean Section. He said: “The Section’s innovation in organising a Young Engineer’s Forum where final year students from the University of the West Indies were chosen to present a technical paper at this year’s Tribology Conference, was the first of its kind by any section, and was applauded by STLE’s Board of Directors internationally. Tribology is described by the Oxford dictionary as the study of friction, wear, lubrication and the design of bearings or the Science of lubricating surfaces in relative motion.

President Richards visits Scarborough Hospital site

While on an official tour of the sister isle recently, His Excellency Professor George Maxwell Richards, accompanied by his wife, Dr Jean Richards, paid the staff of contractor NH International (Caribbean) Limited a visit to the 25-acre new Scarborough Hospital construction site. A new hospital is underway, with the commencement of work on March 18. By the time of the President’s visit, NH International (Caribbean) Limited had already mobilised and commenced excavation, site clearance works and foundations. According to James Duffy, Project Manager for NH International (Caribbean) Limited, “On this project there are approximately 30,000 cubic metres of material to excavate and replace, a point His Excellency found particularly interesting because he enquired into the physical characteristics of the soil and rock being removed.”

President Richards was given an outline of the sequence of construction works, which when completed, will consist of 22 single-storey buildings and 4 two-storey buildings. A 100-bed facility, the finished complex will include a state-of-the-art maternity building, a paediatric (children’s) building, adult acute surgical, mental health wing and medical buildings, an operating theatre, outpatient treatment building, medical records, radiology, pharmacy and a laboratory. Various ancillary and support buildings also form part of the project, including a heliport for emergency situations. Project Manager James Duffy of NH International (Caribbean) Limited described the experience as, “What a day! We were preparing for a site meeting and the next thing we knew, police outriders arrived on site at the head of a motorcade. There was a knock on the door and we were advised that the President had arrived. “You see, I’m just a humble builder, a career civil engineer, a veteran of many projects, but it is a rare honour indeed for me to be presented to a Head of State. I shall never forget it.” The new Scarborough Hospital is due to be completed in 2005.

Scary scenario

FOR two days last week there was a conference organised by the Employers Consultative Association (ECA) the title of which was a mouthful: “International Crime and Terrorism; Implications for Business and Caribbean Economies.” There were many distinguished speakers including former President of TT, Mr Arthur N Robinson, the US Ambassador Mr Roy Austin and internationally famous forensic accountant Mr Robert Lindquist.

Mr Austin, as expected and following his country’s recent experiences with terrorists, chose to warn that Trinidad and Tobago might suffer a fallout from investors if the government continued to be tardy in passing anti-terrorism laws. On the other hand Mr Robinson, himself a survivor of terrorism, and as was also expected given his interest in the international court, stated that the answer to crime and terrorism is not in having more laws and mobilising more force but in the “rule of law.”

The featured speaker at Wednesday’s opening, also a survivor of terrorism, Frank Razzano was there when terrorists blew up the World Trade Centre in New York. His take on the subject was that Trinidad and Tobago could face a terrorist threat because of its long tradition of following the rule of law? So what do we make of it all?  Before all this could be absorbed, however, a speaker on Thursday captured the leadlines with an even more scary picture of the trouble that this country is in. The conference heard from Darius Figueira, author/academic/lecturer that not only is TT at the heart of the international trade in narcotics, but that local transhipments are being controlled by this society’s elites and are being used to fund a local cell of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

He had more to say — that the drug trade had influenced every institution of the State and was run by supposedly respectable businessmen. We could expect to see al Qaeda trying to ignite tanker ships transporting LNG to the USA, he warned. Now there’s a statement that even though it may be speculative, could indeed hurt the country’s image as a place for investment, much more so than any failure to pass anti-terrorism legislation, as suggested by Mr Austin or adherence to the rule of law as promoted by Mr Robinson. We need no lecturer to tell us how bad the drug trade is affecting our country, both socially and economically and the extent to which this trade is at the heart of the high crime rate, now extended to include almost daily kidnappings for ransom. With respect to Mr Austin’s concerns, we should point out that the last time that foreign investments, for example, plant, machinery and products, were physically threatened was in a purely colonial environment in June 1937 in a social revolution led by Tubal Uriah Butler in the foreign-owned oil industry. This can be stretched perhaps to embrace the 1965 burning of canefields on sugar plantations owned by the UK Tate and Lyle company but as we said that would be stretching it a bit.

The question is what do we do about it? Who is to provide the answers, whether by passing new laws, insisting that the rule of law is observed or by any other means to deal with terrorists igniting gas tankers. No one at the conference, as far as has been reported, offered any solutions virtually confining themselves to individual points of view with regard to the problem while offering no real solutions for the salvation of a small island state under serious threat perhaps not so much from international terrorism — although that must remain a distinct possibility — but from its own homegrown criminals.

DO NOT REPEAT THE LIES OF LIARS


Surely, it is not far-fetched to conclude that our politicians think us imbecilic amnesiacs — unable to detect ridiculous lies; half-truths and innuendo when we hear them and believers only in their version of history.

We are their Iraqi TV audience and they are our Baghdad Bobs, one of the pet names for the pleasant former Iraqi Information Minister, adored for eloquently denying until the very last, that the US had conquered his country. Their spin must become our reality. Therefore, when UNC leader Basdeo Panday got up on a Freeport platform last Monday and told us that timid House Speaker, Barendra Sinanan, was the most biased presiding officer ever, we were supposed to buy it. Completely. Never mind that to most of us, Sinanan is a man willing to take UNC blows every Friday while always pulling his own punches. A man prepared to let the House sink into chaotic disrepute as he did on Friday when he allowed UNC MP Kelvin Ramnath to blatantly defy him and to reduce the Office of Speaker to impotence. If the Waning Sun boss, Basdeo Panday al Sahaf, pronounced Sinanan unfair, the Speaker was. We were to forget on command that presiding officers always served their Governments, some more slavishly than others. Moreover, we were to believe that Speakers as prejudiced as Dr Rupert T Griffith never existed. In Panday’s new history of TT’s Parliament, there was never a Speaker Griffith who abused his power to silence the Opposition.

This, I imagine, is Baghdad Bas’ version of what happened in 2001. “These PNM cowards have no morals,” he would declare. “They have no shame about lying. There was never a Griffith. This is an illusion … they are trying to sell to the voters an illusion.” Griffith, according to the UNC misleader, never sent then Opposition PNM MP for Diego Martin Central, Ken Valley to the Privileges Committee in May 2001 for alleging that he, Panday, had tampered with that year’s list of Coast Guard recruits. It was not Griffith who ruled that Valley had made statements “without due care and attention, and did negligently assert in the House something about the conduct of another Member, which he claimed to be true, but which turned out to be false.” Panday al-Sahaf’s account probably would be: “They are sick in their minds. I say to you this talk is not true. This is part of their sick Balisier mind. Valley was not even within 100 miles of the Privileges Committee. There is no Privileges Committee, except the one Speaker Sinanan sent Kelvin Ramnath to last month.” It was definitely not the same Griffith two weeks later — when Panday accused PNM MP Colm Imbert of owning “paper companies involved in regional fraud” — who instantly protected his Prime Minister. It was not Rupert T, who after thumbing through his Order Book, decided that Panday was guilty of no contravention of Standing Order 36 (5), which prohibits a member from imputing improper motives to a peer.

This is the truth of May 2001, according to Baghdad Bas, “Just look carefully at what really happened. I only want you to look carefully. Do not repeat the lies of liars. Do not become like them. I would never accuse anyone wrongly. It is Barry Sinanan who is allowing members like Camille Robinson-Regis to say deceptive things about UNC MPs, even when they happen to be true.” Again, only a week after saving Panday, it was not Griffith who made it clear he would never fail to protect the former PM and the UNC. It was never, during late May 2001 that PNM MP for Diego Martin West; Keith Rowley was suspended from the House. Rowley never accused then Attorney General, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj of knowing the contract for the construction of the Piarco airport was null and void but yet “pole-vaulting on principle” by staying in the Cabinet and allowing “them to carry on and rape the Treasury.” Griffith never asked Rowley to withdraw his “unparliamentary language.” Moreover, when Rowley did not deny his language was unparliamentary or insulting to anyone, Griffith did not order the MP to discontinue his contribution. It is not recorded in Hansard that the former Speaker demanded the PNM MP leave the Chamber for the remainder of the sitting. Not if we are to believe Panday al Sahaf. Nor was it Griffith, who when Rowley refused to withdraw, who asked the then UNC Attorney General, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj to move a motion to suspend the PNM man. The motion was never forthwith put and the PNM MP never ejected indefinitely. It certainly was not Griffith, who in early June 2001, barred Rowley’s colleague Fitzgerald Hinds, from the rest of the sitting because Hinds exited the Chamber to attend a caucus meeting when Griffith was “on his feet.” “Manning…is accusing us of suspending PNM MPs,” Panday al Sahaf would say. “We want to tell him that we never suspended anybody. They were either killed in battle, most of them get killed because they are cowards anyway, and the rest they just get captured. That day in May we slaughtered them with the Piarco Airport. Now Sinanan is trying to suspend Ramnath. But, we will make the coward Sinanan drink poison inside the Red House walls.”

Panday would further explain that in July 2001, Griffith never rebuked Rowley for “imputing improper motives” when he accused Panday of presiding over UNC wrongdoing:  “I blame the media — they are marketing for the PNM! Anyway, the infidel Rowley only deserves to be hit with shoes.”  In addition, according to Panday, the parliamentary events of October 5, 2001 were press propaganda. The UNC Government was not defeated on three bills and new UNC whip, Ganga Singh did not ask the House to be suspended indefinitely. The PNM did not call for a “division!” so the vote of each member could be individually recorded. Griffith never ignored their petition and did not illegally adjourn the House indefinitely. The then Opposition People’s National Movement simply did not understand procedure. “Desperate PNM!” Baghdad Bas would shout. “When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics, the grandfathers of Manning and little Rowley were scratching around in caves. We never break the law. God will roast their stomachs in hell.” He would continue: “They will say any lie to win the local election. However, we are driving them back from Caroni. We are making them commit political suicide in Siparia. They will have to surrender or be burned in their maxis.” And, Baghdad Basdeo Panday al Sahaf would conclude: “No I am not scared of the PNM and neither should you be! It’s the truth I tell you.”

WI cricket and women’s health

THE EDITOR: Like almost all real Caribbean citizens I take great delight in the slightest hint or resurgence of our competitive capacity in cricket. I love it when we show character and struggle, when we perform well and, of course, I am thrilled to the bone when we win. Ardent cricket fan that I am, I am puzzled at the enormous difference in how our media treats cricket and something else that is very clear to me, women’s reproductive health.

Win, lose draw or tie, there are editorials and letters in the media day after day about cricket — about the board, about the selectors, about the coaches about the captain and about the players. And this is all in addition to the special Sports sections where we see or hear detailed descriptions and dissections of the public performance on the field. This is what feeds high performance. Everything is public and challenged. Not so for women’s reproductive health. Why? Our government gets away with avoiding a discussion of women’s reproductive health. Professionals, lawyers and doctors, ignore the issue. Most people are silent. Women are harmed in their thousands year after year. No one cares. We yearn to the world standard in cricket and are indifferent to being substandard in women’s health. Unless we can apply similar tough, objective measurement criteria, the same openness, the same intolerance for sloppiness, the same insistence on high performance, and demand the same levels of accountability we are doomed to remain stuck in the low standards in which we wallow today. How is it that we take such joy in men’s triumph in their world and yet they remain so indifferent to our suffering?


JERSEY MAHARAJ
Carapichaima