So this was not a wild and reckless act and not caring about taxpayers’ money, but an honest mistake.

What should happen is we should learn from this, and the permanent secretary, who controls this vote, should ensure that the roaming facility for every public servant, including ministers, has a limited amount, which shuts off when it reaches that limit — to prevent further deliberate or accidental misuse.

The only person who should have full use of roaming whenever he/she travels would be the Prime Minister because, regardless of whether there is an acting Prime Minister or not, he/she must be accessible all the time.

Which brings into context the totally ridiculous comments made by even present ministers to defend foolishness — that the roaming cost of $59,000 in four days is justified as “the government business must go on.” When politicians try to defend and justify “dotishness” it causes the public to lose faith and confidence, as such an excuse is nothing short of irresponsibility by someone who holds high office and borders on a “never see come see” attitude.

So if a minister goes to China for three weeks, are the ministers are saying that a roaming bill of several hundred thousand dollars would be justified as “the government business must go on?” And to those who want to defend this, please note that whenever any minister departs the country, his/her portfolio, authority and responsibilities are handed over to another minister, so there is no justification for stating that the minister abroad is required to continue liaising and to be in contact 24/07 with his/ her ministry to keep it effective.

So there is nothing so critical that requires a minister to have roaming constantly while abroad, especially when they spend most of their time in a high-end conference room or hotel that has Wi-Fi.

Note that ministers in previous governments have said little about this, as the same practice of unlimited roaming was in effect.

So instead of witch-hunting the Tourism Minister, or trying to defend foolishness, this situation should be seen as an opportunity to get things right. That is how a young nation develops.

It certainly cannot develop if people who support a political party, and who hold strategic positions, use the opportunity to give confidential data to their political friends, such as extracting confidential information from a telecommunication provider, inclusive of phone bills, and giving the bills to their political allies, as political affiliation means more to some than professionalism in their workplace.

Hopefully, one day we would all see beyond politics and try to get it right.

GARY GRIFFITH via email

The correction of papers, overseen by the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), was done this year between 8 am and 4.30 pm at the School from May 12 to 16.

What this also meant was that the scores of secondary school teachers used to correct the papers were absent from their classrooms for the same period, ultimately denying students under their charge the opportunity of being taught.

Now, I don’t blame the teachers because they provide an invaluable service to our country and primary school students who would soon be under their wings.

My problem is with the system that has allowed such to take place without seeking meaningful ways to curb such loss of productivity.

Recently the Teaching Service Commission highlighted its concerns about teacher absenteeism and late arrivals in the classroom during a parliamentary joint select committee hearing, but the teachers are granted leave by the Education Ministry to be absent from their classrooms. This is unacceptable and must be dealt with immediately to avoid any reoccurrence.

I think the time has come for those in authority to conduct an evaluation of the processes involved and seek to implement corrective measures whereby the inconvenience to teachers and students is minimised or eliminated.

Unlike the online correction of CSE C and CXC papers by secondary school teachers, the SE A examination papers are corrected manually, thereby requiring the physical presence of selected teachers.

We already know what the problem is so here’s a simple solution: 1. The SE A exam should be pushed back and held mere days before the start of the Easter vacation.

2. The two-week Easter vacation would serve as a cool-down period for the thousands of SE A students whose anxiety levels would have been high because of their objective to strive for excellence.

Those students would be afforded the opportunity to relax at home and await the results of their exam in the new term.

3. Sufficient time would thus be given to the teachers to accurately correct the papers as opposed to rushing the process because of the four-day deadline they are required to meet.

Should the Education Ministry and the various stakeholders see merit in my simple, efficient and effective recommendation and cause it to be implemented, the time lost while teachers are busy correcting papers, when they should be teaching in their classrooms, would become something of the past, providing a win-win situation for all.

AKILE SIMON Curepe

The ghats can be roughly translated as the stairs that lead down to the holy river. As I set foot on Kedar Ghat through a narrow doorway, the river opens out in front of me. It’s a breathtaking view after my twenty-six years absence. The auto-rickshaw driver, Ahmed, points out Harishchandra Ghat to our right. The smoke from burning bodies floated off over the river on the early winter morning.

A man passing by comments with a knowing shake of his head, as though teaching us a lesson, “We all end up there one day.” I nod in response and look towards the river. Men are already waist-deep in the water, making their offerings of flowers and water and taking their ritual baths.

Benares or Kāshi as the city is also known, now has a different appeal to me as an adult. For children, as we were in the late 1980s, the ghats were a morning adventure where we were taken for a bath during the Kartik nahaan or where a 5.30 am boat ride revealed a gorgeous sunrise and a wide expanse of architecture that gave the city its special feeling.

Today, I walk down the long flight of steps to the river, look up and see the magnificence of the temple architecture and old palaces. One feels minute in the presence of centuries of history enshrined in old walls, and temples that resonate with the simple devotion of daily worshippers who endure long lines simply to have a quick look at the images of gods and goddesses inside.

One lady is sitting on the steps of a shrine in a courtyard of the Vishwanath temple looking through the bars that are three-quarter way blocked off. There is a space at the bottom. Her head is almost on the floor as she strains to catch a glimpse of the mūrti/image through the open space. A pujari/temple priest chases her. The priests are still getting the mūrti ready for viewers.

No one is supposed to be intruding on the dressing of the image. But the lady has gotten her satisfaction and she moves on.

To my left and right, the other ghats stretch along the river like open arms as if to embrace the river that flows peacefully along.

From the top of the stairs, I survey the river that defines this city and many Hindus in Trinidad.

A friend has asked me to bring back Ganges water.

The Ganges of Benares is the site of life and death. There are over eighty ghats dedicated to different activities even while ritual bathing and devotion is a common theme.

In a sense, one experiences the city’s life on these ghats, from the daily Ganga aarti on evenings, done with much pomp and festivity, accompanied by singing and chanting, to the burning of bodies and the washing of clothes, that all take place on ghats allocated to these activities.

One cannot visit Benares and sidestep the presence of death. On our drive from the airport, a car passes by with a body strapped to the roof. It is wrapped in bright orange cloth with gold tassels that gives it a festive air. The car bumps along the dirt roads of the villages we have to pass through. The body too takes a hard ride, bouncing up and down much to the amazement of my friend who has never seen a dead body in this situation.

“It’s so impersonal, unemotional.

I can’t see my family being treated that way, exposed to the world even though the body is covered. But I guess this is normal for them because the body has no life right?” The question is rhetorical.

My childhood in Benares has made me immune to this amazement.

I had misjudged the impact of memories until now. Death is a given, a part of a mathematical formula where life is the one you have to work out. Varanasi is commonly defined as the City of Light. That light includes death, just another rite of passage, and a release from the illusory world. But the legacies left behind serve as an impetus for some to build upon.

The deaths of calypsonian Brigo and guitarist Tony Voisin, this week, signify the continuous movement towards the end of eras of music.

These deaths coincide with a year that marks the centennial anniversary of the end of East Indian indentureship.

We are thus reminded further of the importance of recording the lives and legacies of our people for we often forget in our present, that there is a future. And the histories of nations are built through the legacies of both individuals and communities.

Parents and children are under immense stress from day one.

One of the major issues with the SE A examination is the content of the material to be studied. During my 18 years of teaching mathematics at the secondary school level, I never encountered some of the mathematical terms that 10 and 11-year olds were being forced to learn; I had to resort to the dictionary to find some of those definitions.

I was also totally amazed to see that some of the topics I was teaching students of Forms 1, 2 and 3 were also being taught at Standards 4 and 5. This syllabus is much too onerous for little children.

This could be one of the reasons for the high dropout rate of children in our schools — the material is too burdensome. It is particularly difficult for those children who have no one who can help them with their homework. Such children will inevitably fall through the cracks. Could this have contributed to our high crime rate? In many cases, children are promoted from one class to a another simply because of their ages rather than because they have mastered the abilities required in those classes.

The initial solution would be to have remedial classes for the children who are not doing as well as their peers. This, however, is a challenge due to our existing system.

Additionally, a lot of children study just to pass the exam — they do not understand what they are doing. As a result, when they go to secondary school, there is a lot of material they have to “unlearn” before learning how to do it other than by rote.

It is my humble opinion that the syllabus needs to be revised so that more children can become achievers and acquire a feeling of selfworth if we are to save our children.

JENNY SINGH via email

On the face of it, any rise in prices is a bad thing for the consumer, but the circumstances in this case are exceptional, as is the method of raising the price. It’s the old law of supply and demand in its peculiar 21st century guise – and it has implications for smaller producers.

While the aim of producers of any commodity, be it oil, motor cars or peanuts, is to come up with more of it at a lower production cost, the oil industry now has to stop congratulating itself and start behaving as if there wasn’t so much of it available after all.

That’s because too much availability brings the price down, which is good for the man in the street, but not for the oil companies themselves, whose enormous profits filter through to their country’s government .

Now the mighty companies that have mastered the art of sucking the black sludge from the bowels of the earth have had to put the brakes on and leave them on – for the time being, anyway.

And in doing this they are depriving themselves of money, which is a straightforward contravention of the laws of business.

Full marks, then, to Saudi Arabia and Russia for coming to an agreement that benefits the smaller oil-producing nations.

Not that the Saudis and the Russians are going to starve because of this. Those who have been making an obscenely good living out of petrochemicals will have their living downgraded to absurdly good, while the poor people who have never got much out of it anyway will continue to get nothing.

When I first visited Venezuela seven years ago, the country was relatively buoyant, floating on a tide of oil which brought a smile to the face of controversial president Hugo Chavez.

You wouldn’t have known there was all this oil money around, though, because all the common people saw of it was almost-free petrol.

At that time you could fill your tank for about one US dollar – but the roads were crumbling, the power was on and off and the country was already on the slide because Chavez had an agenda that didn’t include obvious measures like making the infrastructure work efficiently.

While Trinidad and Tobago has reaped the benefits of its oil industry, it has hardly mirrored the success of the Arab countries, where in some cases everything is tax-free because the government doesn’t need to screw money out of the people, which is what taxation amounts to.

TT has ambled along in a suitably Caribbean way. Meanwhile, across the water in Suriname, they’ve got what used to be considered an emerging oil industry but is beginning to look like a myth.

The Americans call this Goliath of international commerce Big Oil. It makes huge profits and doesn’t care what happens on the way. And yet here we have Big Oil coming to agreements among its biggest members to hold their horses for a while.

The concept of business having too much of a good thing has been seen before in more modest arenas, and if I may use an example from my own experience, it will be from the world of the dairy farmer.

The island of Guernsey used to be famous for its cows. It still is, to a certain extent, with dairy herds full of Guernsey genes put to good use all over the world because of their ability to produce large quantities of good-quality milk.

Back home, though, the dairy industry is a skeleton of the mighty beast it used to be.

TT producers of many foods and other products can identify with this situation: it is often cheaper to import the stuff than to produce it yourself.

The only reason the dairy industry in my little island still exists at all is that visitors expect to see cute brown and white cows in the fields, so the farmers are permitted – not asked or required, but permitted – to produce a certain amount of milk.

Guernsey doesn’t actually need it, and the wider world certainly doesn’t.

The industry itself is just symbolic and the island is hanging onto it, whereas TT ’s glorious fruit heritage doesn’t even get a mention in its Wikipedia entry.

The world does need oil, just as it needs milk and coconuts, but it doesn’t need the contribution of every country that has oil reserves.

So how long will it be before the big boys say, “Okay, Trinidad, you’ve had your fun.

Now get back to the tropical fruits and the beaches and the liming and leave this ugly petrochemical business to us. We’ll call you if we

Investigators said the unidentified man’s head was covered in blood and a bloody stone was found near his body.

According to police reports, at about 3 pm, a visitor discovered the man’s body in a drain near the site in Hindustan, New Grant, Princes Town.

The visitor contacted the Princes Town police who cordoned off the area. A district medical officer ordered the body be taken to the Forensic Science Centre, St James for an autopsy tomorrow.

Al-Rawi said he had been told so by the Chef Parliamentary Counsel. “Thank God for written records,” he said, in his wind-up to the bill he had piloted earlier.

He related that a Cabinet policy document from March 2013 (under the PP) had dealt with prisons officers collecting bail money, as he hit back at Opposition MP for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Moonilal’s complaint that the process was cumbersome, that prisons officers were to be turned into cashiers and that prison was not the right place to store any such accrued sums of money.

The committee stage of the bill will be taken on Friday when the House will also debate an Opposition motion on

“The issue of the property tax is certainly one of certainty because there are multiple ways in which the proper tax can be implemented,” he told Sunday Newsday.

“But, ideally, it is proper to wait to hear what the court has to say on Monday and otherwise and we will speak further on that.” The Government heads to the Court of Appeal, tomorrow, seeking to reverse the ruling of Justice Frank Seepersad in relation to the implementation of the controversial property tax.

Seepersad’s ruling on Friday in the San Fernando High Court followed submissions by Senior Counsel and former attorney general Anand Ramlogan, who filed for judicial review on behalf of applicant Devant Maharaj, a former People’s Partnership government minister.

Seepersad, who ruled that the stay would remain in effect until May 31, until further notice, said there was a “strong arguable case” that the property tax could be struck down or the process by which the Government is seeking to enforce it, justifiably reviewed in the courts. Citizens were initially expected to submit their completed property valuation forms, tomorrow, at the designated offices.

However, Finance Minister Colm Imbert announced in a statement on Tuesday that the deadline has been extended to June 5, following the overwhelming response of citizens to the exercise.

The Opposition has consistently questioned the Government’s timing in seeking to implement the property tax, arguing that citizens are already under extreme pressure to survive in the economic downturn.

They also have called for clarification on certain aspects of the exercise.

Yesterday, Al-Rawi, when asked if the Government will ultimately claim victory in executing the property tax, simply gave a synopsis of the most recent challenge to its implementation.

“The matter before the court on Friday is an application for leave for judicial review and for interim relief,” he said. “That matter came prematurely to the court in my view in so far as the claimant had requested a response to a pre-action protocol and requested that that be done by Friday, by Friday meaning at the close of business.

“Notwithstanding that fact, the applicant went to court, even though they had yet to allow Friday to pass and the judge considered the matter.

“It was ex parte-opposed, meaning they gave the lawyers for the State, for the Commissioner of Valuations a call, and said look, we have a matter and we proceeding with it. That being the case, the matter was opposed. The judge gave an order that they are granting leave for judicial review.” Al-Rawi regarded the leave for judicial review as “a very low threshold.” “It essentially means that you have an arguable case that the matter will go to judicial review and you deal with it there and the judge also gave interim relief in relation to a press statement.” The AG said the Government was subsequently advised by their attorneys to appeal Seepersad’s order tomorrow at 9 am.

“The appeal will be dealt with at the court. We will certainly be guided by the highest courts in the land and certainly the confusion created will be addressed once we hear what the courts have to say.” In relation to the Opposition’s claim of victory in Seepersad’s ruling, Al-Rawi told Sunday Newsday, “It is not the first time we have heard the Opposition Leader claim victory in defeat. At the end of the day, one cannot complain that the separation of powers operates.

“There is a Judiciary in the country and people have the right to approach the courts and we will deal with the matter and the outcome from the court.” Asked what would be the Government’s advice to citizens in the wake of the ruling, Al-Rawi said: “It will be improper of me to answer that question because there is a judicial order which is under appeal. So, I don’t want to be inciting a contempt of court, one way or the other.

“At the end of the day, we must await the due process of the deliberations of the court and we can certainly speak with clarity after that.”

In all the opposing for opposing sake, this is one of the most despicable.

Remember it’s the UNC (PP) government that stopped the almost completed academy and had the grand opening, for votes, of the hospital when clearly it was incomplete.

We citizens are too quick to jump when politicians say skip and run when they say walk. Politicians will ruin this our country unless we stop them from their reckless destruction.

RADCLIFFE JOHN Marabella

Either you are blinded by ideology because your eyes are where they should not be (to paraphrase politely a Trini creole expression known to over 60s like myself) or you are being downright hypocritical.

Chavismo promised a new and more equitable Venezuela but in the long run it proved to be a monumental disaster.

There are many lessons that we Trinis can learn from our nearest neighbours’ plight, not the least of which is how to get up and fight when you are being oppressed.

JAN WESTMAAS San Fernando