In addition to the well known names, he listed personalities such as George Weekes, Basdeo Panday, Clothil Walcott, and Selwyn John, who, he said, had made sterling contributions to the growth and development of the movement, and said their memories must be similarly preserved.

Cuffie said while all celebrations of Labour Day are important, this one, marking the 80th anniversary of the labour riots of 1937 which gave birth to the movement, requires even greater need for pause and reflection on the tremendous contribution made by the trade union movement on behalf of its members.

He said the movement remains a strong and vibrant contributor to the national dialogue, and its members can be found across all strata of society, continuing the rich tradition of service to the national community.

The Government was committed to working closely with the trade union movement, he said, to ensure that the rights of workers and their representatives were always respected, and that the gains won over the years were not callously eroded.

Cuffie said his ministry had tried to make sure public officers were provided with the most modern accommodation possible through the opening of the Government Plaza, and when fully occupied, these buildings, together with the new Ministry of Education Tower on St Vincent Street and the occupation of One Alexandra Place in St Clair, would have provided superior accommodation for more than 4,000 public servants.

“One day is simply not enough to thank fathers for the enormous contributions they, and parents make, in moulding our children.

“We look to fathers as role models, counsellors, teachers and caregivers. Their morals and values provide a foundation that helps to shape and develop our children into exceptional individuals and valuable members of our society.” She hailed her own father for motivating her to always push for excellence in academics, in my profession and in my personal life, him having made personal sacrifices to provide for his children and afford them every opportunity to succeed, just like other fathers did.

“It takes courage and strength to raise a child in the current environment of insecurity and uncertainty in Trinidad and Tobago, and I commend the many fathers who have taken up this duty.

“While the concept of the family has evolved, with parents sharing the responsibility of ensuring the emotional, physical and intellectual development of their children, fathers are viewed as sources of strength and tend to take on the role of protectors of their families.” Persad-Bissessar hailed those single parents who must play the demanding roles of both father and mother. “To the single fathers and single mothers, I applaud your courage, and wish you the strength to continue on your path.” She said, “There are also many in our country who have not experienced a father’s love, and some who may have never had a father in their lives while growing up. It is my hope that where fathers are absent, others have stepped in and taken on that role, providing care and love to so many of our sons and daughters.” Persad-Bissessar asked all to spare a thought for those persons whose fathers have passed away.

“To those experiencing sorrow and loss at this time, I wish you God’s grace. Take solace in the fact that your fathers will always live on in the memories you keep.

“On this occasion of Fathers Day, I send my fondest wishes to all citizens who have taken up this sacred duty. I wish all fathers and their families health, happiness and every success.”

TT were beaten 2-1 at the Costa Rica National Stadium in San Jose, but Look Loy pointed out that the absence of Jones, the national captain and striker, saw the speedy Boatswain, as well as midfielders Kevin Molino, Joevin Jones and Nathan Lewis, in use more often than the Costa Ricans would have anticipated.

“We saw a hint of the potential of this team when we play with an approach that I think is more natural and more rationale, given the abilities and the strengths of our players, which is quick counter-attacks into the spaces, along the sides of the pitch and behind the opposing defence,” said Look Loy, during a recent interview.

“The injury to Kenwyne Jones, and I hope he’s alright, gave the opportunity for us to play without him,” he continued. “I have been saying that successive coaches should have been doing so for years now. We looked dangerous when we allowed our players to run.

“When we’re playing with Kenwyne Jones, and his hold-up play, the attack is static, even stagnant.

When we were able to release men on the sides of the pitch and release Boatswain up front, we created panic in the Costa Rican team.” Commenting on the match itself, Look Loy, who is also the president of the Trinidad and Tobago Super League, as well as coach of FC Santa Rosa, noted, “We should not have lost.

“We should have at least drawn (but) didn’t, if only because the assistant referee, who was probably no more than 15 yards away, with a clear sight-line, didn’t give what was an obvious penalty (against Boatswain in the 51st minute).

“These things happen in football, as hard as they are to stomach.” But Look Loy pointed out, “The reason why we lost the game was because (of) a very poor defensive performance that allowed two goals, too much space allowed to opponents, in and around the penalty area, and they penalised us for it.” On the flip side, he said, “We got a favour from Honduras with that (2-2) draw in Panama City.

Panama haven’t been going very well and they have been dropping points at home, where we have to go. I never give up and I believe we must fight till the end.

“I think with changes in formation and changes in selection, and if we get all points in Panama (and at home to) Honduras, and all points against the United States, that would give us 12. Call me a dreamer, I have not given up hope as yet.”

This flagship programme facilitates the transfer of knowledge from accomplished artists and cultural workers to emerging practitioners in their respective fields. It is also an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of these mentors for their contribution to the artistic and cultural community.

The mentors for this year’s programme are Janice Patricia McLeod, Orisha traditions; Lionel Jagessar, Fancy Indian mas; Rosalind Gabriel, children’s mas; Sharon Pitt, professional development in broadcasting and Simeon Sandiford, aspects of music production and the business of music.

Addressing the audience at the launch, Permanent Secretary Angela Edwards reiterated the commitment of the ministry in investing in the local cultural resources such as the tangible and intangible heritage in the communities and the culture and creative industries, said a media release.

She said the programme was critical to the ministry’s mission to build resilient, culturally- rich communities and sustainable creative industries.

The future of TT is in excellent hands because the programme focuses on the culture, history and the legacy of what makes us unique as Trinidadians and Tobagonians, Edwards said.

Director of the Culture Division Ingrid Ryan-Ruben said the focus of this year’s programme was all-encompassing.

Emphasis will be placed on Carnival arts because there were a lot of masters but few mentees. In addressing the mentees she told them that they had the opportunity to carry their art to a new level.

She also implored them to learn from these mentors but also use their creativity and inject new life into the art forms because these are pivotal to the county’s heritage.

During the event, culture support specialist Elize Rostant paid tribute to two former mentors and national cultural icons, the late Narcenio “Senor” Gomez and Stephen Derek.

The tribute to Derek, master craftsman extraordinaire was done through a Power Point presentation in which tributes were done by Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts; other ministry officials and mentors of the 2016 programme.

The inmates were discovered missing on Tuesday last after none could be found in their rooms and on the compound.

The inmates are believed to have escaped by running along a large ravine behind the home, from which they could have accessed a number of different streets within the Diego Martin area.

Officers of the Western Division responded to the report and searched the last recorded addresses of the boys.

Since then, two of the teenagers were found by police walking along Cantaro Extension Road on Thursday afternoon.

Officers questioned them about their intended destination and when they could not give an account, they were arrested and taken to the Santa Cruz police station.

They later confessed to being among the group which ran away from the home.

While being questioned, the two refused to give information on the whereabouts of other escapees.

They also complained about inhumane treatment at the institution and gave that as the reason for escaping.

The boys, who are in their late teens, were placed at the home for a variety of offences including robbery while one of the escapees was at the institution for his alleged involvement in the robbery and murder of former soldier Calvert Dexter James on J’Ouvert morning this year.

The charges against the men, three from East Dry River in Port of Spain and the other from Gonzales, Belmont, were laid by Sgt Rennie Grant after they allegedly gave confession statements on Friday and Saturday.

No identification parades were held as the men who robbed Harvey wore masks.

On Friday afternoon, Harvey identified a watch which was taken from him. Also taken were a mobile phone and $1000. The cash and phone were not recovered.

The suspects are being kept in separate police stations in the Port of Spain division pending their expected court appearance tomorrow.

On Friday, police led by ASP Ajith Persad and Sgt Anthony Williams of the Port of Spain CID, went to East Dry River and Gonzales where they detained the men.

One of the men allegedly told the police that he and his accomplices had “robbed everybody already, so is time to rob God.” Harvey told Newsday that he was hoping to meet the men but was aware that he could not have any interaction with the detained men.

Last Monday, at about 5 am, Harvey was at the presbytery of the St Martin de Porres Church in Gonzales, where he spent the night to prepare for a seminar, when three men, one armed with a gun, accosted him and robbed him. They threatened to kidnap him for a $50,000 ransom. He was later hog-tied and gagged. The priest managed to free himself and alerted police.

And in a departure from previous years, a number of changes have been made as the traditional walk from Avocat Junction is expected to begin after addresses by representatives from individual unions. Each address is expected to be three-minutes long.

The unions would then lead their members to Charlie King Junction where addresses will be made by the leadership of JTUM, NATUC, FITUN and would include the feature address by JTUM president Ancel Roget.

Several activities are expected to precede the march including the Butler Classics 20K walk which starts at the OWTU Paramount Building, 99A Circular Road, San Fernando headquarters at 5 a.m.

At 5.30 a.m., the Butler Classics 20K run also starts at the same venue. Also at 5.30 a.m., the Butler Classics 5K Junior’s Race starts at Jovan’s Grocery, Harris Village, South Oropouche.

There will also be a wreath laying ceremony at Tubal Uriah Butler’s grave site at Apex Cemetery, Fyzabad at 8am.

However, the All Trinidad General Workers Trade Union will host its own celebrations at Rienzi Complex, Couva beginning with a march from the Esperanza Recreation Ground at 10a.m. The union is a member of NATUC.

An address by president Nirvan Maharaj is expected to take place at noon followed by a cultural show.

In a Labour Day message yesterday, Indarsingh also criticised government’s message issued by Public Administration Minister Maxie Cuffie who said his government was “committed to working closely” with the trade union movement to ensure that workers’ rights were always respected and that the gains won over the years would not be callously eroded.” “Exactly the opposite is happening in the country,” Indarsingh said in a media release yesterday.

“The principles of good industrial practices and the labour laws of our country are being undermined by this Government. Workers and the labour movement have absolutely nothing to celebrate on Labour Day after 21 months of the Keith Rowley led-Government.” Indarsingh said the prime minister as well as the ministers of finance, energy, public utilities and agriculture must tell the labour movement how many more thousands of workers would be forced on the breadline as a result of the closure of the Board of Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise with the coming of the Revenue Authority, the restructuring of Petrotrin, ADB and NAMDEVCO and TSTT in relation to the $255M acquisition of Massy Communications. Indarsingh said Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste- Primus, a former trade union leader, had “totally betrayed the labour movement and workers” and had presided over the “collapse of a joint memorandum of understanding signed between the PNM and the labour movement prior to the September 2015 general election.” “Today, the labour movement has withdrawn from the National Tripartite Advisory Council (NATC) and social dialogue is no longer on the Rowley- led administration’s radar.” He said workers were being “pulverised with sustained taxation” while there had been three increases in the price of gas and diesel and the restoration of VAT on 7,000 basic food items.

Indarsingh said the property tax as well as a “sliding TT dollar have resulted in a total erosion of workers’ purchasing power resulting in thousands of families having great difficulty in putting bread and butter on the table for their dependants.

“I am asking Baptiste- Primus to tell the 25,000-plus workers who have lost their jobs, especially those of Arcelor Mittal and CENTRIN, what has become of her ten-point plan and her announcement of 35,000 Canadian jobs for citizens to drive long haulage trucks in Alberta which will lead to them acquiring Canadian citizenship,” he said.

Statements on race and ethnicity from notable individuals and organisations, however provocative and tendentious they may appear, ought to be examined for their validity without being dismissed out of hand.

We should, as far as possible, seek to dispassionately engage rather than casually ignore, as indeed Noel Kalicharan has, in part, challenged through evidence Theodore Lewis’ claim of the absence of young black males in tertiary education.

Reverting to the Indo-Trinidadian community, diligent and disinterested enquiry into their place today in the social order may undermine some of the cherished beliefs and long-held convictions they harbour of themselves and other groups. It would, indeed, be a bold and candid attempt to differentiate myth from reality and receive the wisdom from obtrusive fact.

As John F Kennedy remarked a few decades ago: “The great enemy of the truth is, very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, dishonest but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic… We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” There are various tendencies among elements in the Indo-Trinidadian community. There is the propensity to engage in triumphalist rhetoric which very often is at odds with the social reality. Another is to invest in the present generation the virtues and values of a previous era without acknowledging the changed mentality.

Also, there is an inclination to unquestioningly accept and regurgitate the views of themselves as formulated by others — the tendency to perpetuate half-truths and myths. Then there is the disinterest or reluctance to engage in more objective, evidence-based self-assessment which may be due to an anti-intellectual tradition among their leading opinion makers.

One Dool Singh of Chaguanas in a letter to the Newsday of 30/6/16 referred to this indifference thus: “(Strategising and toiling) are not being done in the Indian community.

Indians are happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend they are safe and secure.” Such complacency seems to be promoted by many in the Indo-Trinidadian business and professional classes from the assumed safety and comfort of their social cocoons.

In previous columns spanning 27 years, I have adverted periodically to one issue of obviously questionable validity propagandised nationally and believed by vast numbers of Indo-Trinidadians themselves that they dominate business and land and property ownership and, by extension, the economy of this country. In my own constrained way I investigated this notion two and a half decades ago. The results of my research were published in a series of columns in the Express newspaper in 1990 and 1991.

I found little evidence to support this assertion of Indo-Trinidadian dominance and therefore characterised it as a myth.

However, the myth persists and is perpetuated by Selwyn Ryan and others. As recent as June 2013, in a column in the Sunday Express, titled “The passing of Afro-Creole hegemony,” Ryan emphatically affirms that Indo-Trinidadians dominated the ownership of business and urban commercial real estate in the country, the professions and, amazingly, even “bureaucratic power in the State sector,” as well as their making dominant strides in the energy and financial sectors.

In response to what I regarded as a flawed perception, I again delved into the issue in a series of columns in this newspaper between 6/6/16 and 18/7/16 to question the basis of this claim because it has significance for the politics and social and ethnic relations in the country.

Today, I am aware of no current research being done to validate or refute this notion of Indo- Trinidadian economic and professional dominance.

Still, the picture is better than it was in previous years when there were deeper rifts between the unions.

All can expect the usual soundings of war on the platform, come rain or shine.

There is dissatisfaction with governance, the pace of economic diversification, the lack of food security, high crime levels and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Labour leaders have also expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of delivery of a promise to phase out contract labour in the Public Service.

But the biggest challenge labour leaders __ and their constituents __ have faced is the level of retrenchments in the country.

The dismissals at the Government Information Services and in the On-the-Job Training (OJT) program have been cited as examples of a disturbing trend in both the public and private sector. With such discontent from the labour movement, it is hard to see their relationship with government and big business improving any time soon.

The current state of affairs is somewhat ironic given labour’s long standing flirtation with politics.

Labour is very often pitted against politics and politicians, yet labour leaders have always gone on to become government ministers.

Before Jennifer Baptiste-Primus there was Errol McLeod. One labour entity (the Movement for Social Justice) even contested elections though unsuccessfully. Recently, Watson Duke’s Progressive Democratic Party won two seats in the Tobago House of Assembly election, restoring a minority voice to that chamber after years of a PNM monopoly.

But the results of labour and politics flirting have always been variable.

It is hard for labour, given its agitation against the oppressive exercise of power, to then take up the reins of power and the responsibilities owed to the wider population.

A lot of the struggles relate not only to credibility but also to the sense that sometimes labour does not compromise enough. What is the role of labour in development? In circumstances where an economic downturn has affected revenue levels, is it in labour’s interest to agitate intensely? Some would say no.

Yet, labour cannot be told the economic situation is bad by those holding the purse strings. How is any government to be trusted in its representation of the facts given the question marks that loom over our most basic economic statistics? Labour must exercise sense and sometimes this calls for an examination of the bigger picture. This is especially true given variables which are out of the control of the State, such as the fate of international trade agreements given actions by Donald Trump, and the escalator that is world oil prices.

At the same time, labour must be allowed to speak out, because that, too, turns out to be a vital part of the movement’s role in development.

The celebration of Labour Day, which comes on the 80th anniversary of the Butler riots, is a reminder that while the role played by this movement is not always aligned with that of government it is still of importance to governance. Labour strengthens the idea that a democracy flourishes when its subjects can mobilise and speak truth to power. A country without this freedom would be terrifying.

So today, though they march along different plains, we urge the labour leaders to march on