The Opposition abstained in the Senate when the vote for the Miscellaneous (Marriages) Bill was taken in January, he said, “because the Attorney General (Faris Al Rawi) removed the clause for the three fifths majority to a simple majority at the 99th hour when winding up his speech on the debate.” On criticisms for appointing two members of the Muslim and Hindu communities as Temporary Senators, Lee said, the United National Congress took that decision to allow them to voice their concerns in the Parliament “given that the Attorney General did not have proper consultations.” He said the two religious leaders were not representing the UNC but were representing the views of their faith .

“We allowed them for democracy and fairness. They would not have gotten that from the Independent or Government benches,” he said .

In the Senate and the House of Representatives, Lee said, all members, including permanent senators, who spoke were against child marriage. However, he said that what the Opposition wanted was equity when it called for an exception for girls between 16 and 18 years based on calls from the Hindu Women’s Organisation and the Network of NGOs .

The exception was proposed as an amendment at the Committee Stage of the bill but it was not allowed by the Attorney General .

“For the record we fought for the Network of NGOs who wanted that to be considered,” Lee said .

In the House of Representatives, all Opposition MPs voted for the bill, he said, “because it is a progressive step for the country.” The removal of the three fifths majority might be an issue, he said .

Based on discussions with some Hindu organisations and the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, Lee said, “they are saying it could be challenged. That is now left in the Attorney General hands.” In his contribution, Lee said, he questioned the removal of the three fifths majority when the Attorney General said he was comfortable and sure about the bill being good law .

“The Opposition was always against, and still is, on the removal of the three fifths clause,” he said .

However, he said, if the Children’s Acts says that under 18 years is a minor, then the marriage bill has to harmonise with it .

“So, it was based on principle that we supported the bill,” he said .

Terrence Ramdin, Christopher Walker, and Nigel Fraser were all killed in separate incidents over the weekend.

Ramdin was shot dead in Malick on Saturday morning; Walker was killed in Cunupia on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning police found the bullet riddled body of Nigel Fraser in Barataria.

According to reports, on Sunday morning at about 9 am, police received a report of gunshots being heard on Sawmill Avenue.

When they checked, they found the body of a man slumped on the ground in a yard in the area. The man was later identified 33-year-old Nigel Fraser.

He is originally from Picton Road, Trou Macaque, Laventille, but had relocated to Sawmill Avenue over the past year. Newsday understands that he was arrested on robbery charges two years ago, and was released on bail last year.

A close female relative told Newsday yesterday that his death was expected because he had always lived a life of crime.

“He wasn’t no bad fellah but when the system get a hold of a man it does be hard to let go (sic). That is what happened with him,” said the close female relative.

“Me and him could not agree because he joined up in this Muslim thing and only want to be on this “pow-pow” thing. But when he make he jail the other day he came out and they said that he could not come back down by us so he came down here to live. Many times I wanted to come up here to see him because his son is only saying he wants to see his father, but I tell him no. Now I have to go back home and tell my son “your father is really gone” The female relative noted that despite his criminal background, Fraser was an ambitious and caring person.

Hours before Fraser’s body was found, Christopher Walker, was killed.

Newsday understands that Walker was on Chin Chin Road, in Cunupia, when he was shot by an unknown gunman, at about 8.20 pm. He was rushed to hospital, but died while undergoing treatment.

On Saturday morning, 19-year-old Terrance Ramdin, also known as “Dj Pop Skull” was killed.

According to reports, Ramdin was in his car along with two other occupants, on Seventh Avenue in Barataria when he was killed. Newsday understands that the 19-year-old was doing a job in Morvant when his laptop broke down. He went to Malick to borrow another laptop from a friend, when his car was intercepted and shot up.

Ramdin died as a result of his wounds, but the two other occupants survived. They are said to be nursing gunshot wounds at hospital.

Autopsies are expected to be done on all three bodies at the Forensic Science Centre in St James today

“We hope very soon that some of our nationals would be able to graduate with degrees in sport management,” he said.

Rowley spoke yesterday at a large gathering of supporters of the PNM at its annual Family Fun Day held at the Eddie Hart Ground, Tacarigua.

In Tobago, he said, discussions were held this morning with Sandals Resort and one aspect of the project is the development of a world class golf course.

Noting there are two other golf courses in Tobago, he said that when the Sandals project is completed, the golf courses would complement those in Barbados and Jamaica so that the Caribbean can host international golfing tournaments at the highest level.

The prime minister further assured that recommendations on the way forward for Stateowned Petrotrin will be implemented in the shortest possible time, once they are acceptable.

As he addressed party supporters, he urged them to hold their members of Parliament accountable, advising that sometimes the elected reprepresentatives ‘need guidance’.

He also reminded elected MPs and other party members that the PNM also represented all of Trinidad and Tobago and as a government they are to take that responsibility seriously.

According to Rowley, citizens of TT put the PNM in government and if not handled carefully, they [citizens] would take the Government out of office.

The business community has been accused of “dropping the ball,” of not “taking the initiative.” Even the Inter-American Development Bank in its report has stated that “the Trinidad and Tobago private sector is not up to the challenges.” Very true every word. However, like water flowing to the lowest point, business and money flow to where they find their easiest and greatest returns.

So, other than a patriotic reason, why should the TT private sector invest in Trinidad? Businesses in TT faces numerous obstacles in their day-to-day operations, including: * An inefficient and sometimes corrupt public sector.

* A hostile and totally unbalanced and biased industrial relations climate.

* Low productivity from the labour force.

* Unlevel playing field and corruption with government procurement.

* Unlevel playing field and corruption in private sector contracts.

* Inability to access required forex.

* High (and increasing) taxation, even on productive equipment.

If our leaders are sincere in their calls for the private sector to take the lead, then let’s take the bull by the horns: * Enforce the public procurement Act.

* Start enforcing laws like the Companies Act, and crack down on white-collar crime.

* Balance the industrial relations and severance Acts so that the private sector and labour have an equal amount of judges appointed to the Industrial Court.

* Change the Industrial Relations Act so that costs can be awarded against unions if they lose a case, thus eliminating frivolous cases.

* Eliminate productive equipment from the property tax.

* Allow priority access to forex for settlement of bona fide raw material invoices.

* Introduce a tax exemption on all export sales.

As I said before, money and investment flow where they find the highest and easiest returns. Let’s create the environment to facilitate this.

ANDREW DALGLIESH Diego Martin

For instance, if you pay $8 (instead of $6.80) for US$1 but it allows your business to close a lucrative deal, then that extra cost of doing business is well worth it. If you give an “incentive” to a doctor to prescribe your company’s drugs (instead of the competitors’), and he/she does, then that “incentive” is written off as the cost of doing business.

Pharmaceutical companies provide good examples. Many have paid hefty fines for various reasons.

For instance, in 2012 GlaxoSmith- Kline paid US$3 billion for offences including off-label promotion (promoting a drug for unapproved uses), failure to disclose safety data, paying kickbacks to physicians and making false and misleading statements about the safety of Avandia (diabetes drug).

Other companies paying onetime billion dollar fines include Pfizer (2009, US$2.3B), Johnson & Johnson (2013, US$2.2B), Abbott (2012, US$1.5B), and Eli Lilly (2009, US$1.4B). All these companies and others, like Merck, Norvatis and AstraZeneca, are repeat offenders. Repeat offenders? Clearly, to them, these fines are merely “the cost of doing business,” a small price to pay for the massive profits they make.

So when the Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Sport proffered to the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament that the $92,000 spent by her ministry for the Tobago weekend jaunt was “the cost of doing business,” I expected her to tell us about the million-dollar benefits we could expect from the money spent. She didn’t say and no one on the committee bothered to ask.

So I’m asking the PS to tell us what “business” they were doing and what was our expected return on investment.

She could also provide some clarity on the following. We hear that $10,000 was spent on the rental of four vehicles for three days, for a one-day (actually, two hours) function. That works out to over $800 a vehicle per day. What kind of vehicles did they rent? I’ve never spent more than $300 on any car rental in Tobago, and the car carried five people and two golf bags. Then, again, I’m neither a minister nor an assistant nor an adviser and I pay the rental from my own pocket (I don’t have an expense account “without a ceiling,” like the PS), so I try to get value for money.

In her defence, though, the PS did say she believed they got value for money. (Yes, and I believe the West Indies would have won the ICC Champions Trophy easily if only the team had qualified.) Given that the stay at the Magdalena Grand included buffet breakfast and all-you-can-eat lunch and dinner, how much time did they have between meals to drive around in these expensive vehicles? When did the “series of meetings and site visits” take place? Apart from a visit to the Dwight Yorke Stadium which, from all reports, few members of the delegation attended, what business did the delegation conduct? More importantly, can the PS tell us how did these “costs” of doing business redound to the benefit of taxpayers?

NOEL KALICHARAN via email

Before the Lower House passed the legislation which amended the country’s marriage acts, Singh said there are increasing numbers of female-headed households with three times more females under 19 who are heads of households than males. Singh also said the country had to look at the effect of Carnival on sexuality and the availability of legal abortions and sex education in schools, suggesting these were all of greater importance than the legislation of early or forced marriages.

However, Minister of Arts and Culture Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly challenged Singh’s association of Carnival with sex, saying many people enjoy the season in ways that enhance their cultural expression. She questioned what she said was his fixation with Carnival and sex while she thought Carnival was equated with culture.

According to Singh, family life experts estimate that about 15 per cent of all live births are to adolescent parents with the average age of first sexual intercourse being 14. He said there were about 3,000 pregnancies a year in schools and wondered how the legislation would deal with that situation. He added that when the last census was conducted by the Central Statistical Office in 2011 more than 40,000 children were born to persons under 19 and 6,000 children were born to persons under 14, which he said was a high indicator of teenage pregnancies.

He said, “These statistics demonstrate that only a fraction of those were in the context of marriage and related to such social scourges as incest, rape, and generally early cohabitation as a socio-cultural norm.” He said statistics prove that girls have almost equal access to educational opportunities as boys – 97 per cent – and have been excelling through to tertiary levels where they have been outnumbering and outperforming boys. He said gender equality in education has seen this country ranked higher than many developed countries and these statistics make the legislation virtually obsolete. He said the study also showed his country had fewer females out of schools than some developed countries, meaning more girls were making use of the education system, so there was no evidence of forced marriages of those who were 12 to 16-yearsold.

“With higher levels of education, girls are delaying marriage and also because of the advice of parents, religious leaders and elders.”

Certainly, this is a challenge for a young bright articulate attorney to flex his or her muscles voluntarily and do some challenging research into the authorities which would properly inform opinion.

I make the following observations: (a) Are the proceedings of courts (magisterial or high) not being recorded by verbatim reporters? Should this be the case, cannot any magistrate worth his or her salt read these transcripts and form an opinion, thus obviating the need for the humbug and the cost of restarting? If not, why is this not so? Indeed, here lies yet another constraint on the administration of justice.

(b) Is this not yet another reason for abolishing repetitious preliminary hearings? As I have said before, the matter of the administration of justice is of concern to all citizens and ought not to be confined to, and left to the domain of, legal practitioners alone, as seems to be the case at present. Let us all join in the debate.

ERROL OC CUPID Trincity

The legalisation of one specific age of consent to marry automatically leads to the age of consent to access sexual and reproductive health and literature (access to contraception, abortion, contraceptive literature/ pornography etc) without parental consent.

The success of this mandate and the potential for disharmony among our religious bodies, as a result, can become a precedent for the rule of law superseding religious freedom.

The defining truths of pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family based on religious freedom may then be challenged in a court of law.

Therefore the leaders of this wonderful multireligious, multicultural country where every creed and race find an equal place need to think long and hard about the long-term consequences, and not only the immediate, of major decisions of this nature.

Provisions should be made for different ages, while also considering the dignity and respect of women. We must allow for freedom of choice.

It may also be food for thought that in many decades gone by, (before tertiary level education) many young men and women were married before the age of 18 by choice, as they were considered mature enough to raise a family.

Do they no longer exist, or is there some other agenda at work here?

TONIA LEACOCK via email

Organisers said the event, a highlight of the party’s social calendar, is expected to begin at 9 am with the march past competition, featuring teams from throughout the 41 constituencies.

Prime Minister and PNM political leader Dr Keith Rowley will be on hand to witness the parade of the teams and the crowning of the queen during the morning segment of the event. Rowley, who is also the Diego Martin West MP, is expected to address the party’s faithful at about 5 pm.

Organisers said the supporters can expect an exciting event and urged them to come out in their numbers.

Gopeesingh said persons at the EFCL had breached the State performance monitoring manual, leading to a wanton wastage and siphoning of tax-payers dollars.

He said a Senate query had led Garcia to say he had no information of any corrupt activities, yet Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi had been already investigating the matter.

Gopeesingh asked why 10 staff members at the EFCL have not had their contracts renewed and why was the IT manager been suspended? He suggested the suspension was due to a suspicion that the manager was a whistle-blower.

“The 10 employees became collateral damage when there was a feud between the Minister of Education and the EFCL chairman.” Referring to ongoing probes, he said, “We demand the results of this investigation be made public in this Parliament.” he urged the report be sent to the Integrity Commission and Director of Public Prosecutions.

Gopeesingh alleged that million- dollar contracts were awarded by personal email, with contractors allowed to tender even after deadline for the close of tenders.

Garcia accused Gopeesingh of “false statements”. He accused Gopeesingh of suffering from “ministerial tabanca”, adding, “He continues on his campaign to spread untruths and twist things for his own benefits.” Refuting Gopeesingh’s claims that 10 people had been fired, Garcia said their contracts had come to an end and were not renewed.

“Secondly, he continues to say my adviser took a cheque to EFCL so that a contractor could be paid, again, that is not true. What happened is that my adviser accompanied a contractor. She had nothing to do with the payment of the cheque to the contractor.” Opposition MPs laughed.

Garcia said it was “totally false” for Gopeesingh to allege a war between Garcia and the former EFCL chairman.

Denying claims of failing to fully probe the EFCL for impropriety and corruption, Garcia said Finance Minister Colm Imbert on May 31 had told the House of an investigation into EFCL by his ministry’s Central Audit.

Garcia said Al-Rawi said his ministry is also conducting a parallel investigation.

“It is therefore patently incorrect for the Member for Caroni East to say this Government has not conducted a thorough investigation into these matters. These investigations continue apace,” said Garcia.