But is it not also a sign that human beings no longer see each other as such? It is fashionable nowadays to speak of human rights, but what does it mean to see others as human in the fullest sense of the word? A friend of mine who works with people who are disabled tells the story of a religious sister who went every day to visit the homeless. And one day my friend asked, “Do you know the names of these people you minister to?” And she didn’t. “These people” and I use that term carefully, were nameless and faceless.

According to Christian belief there are corporal works of mercy, each of which demands an act of compassion and a recognition of humanity. But without this idea of the human, each act, whether it is feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, burying the dead or giving alms to the poor, becomes an act of hubris that serves only to shore up our sense of being superior in a world we really perceive to be filled with derelicts.

So that giving alms to the poor might actually lead to a feeling of superiority, or what I have heard called a “God complex,” that serves to create a gap between who I am and the object of charity. Once an individual begins to feel so good about her acts of charity that she becomes judgmental, then we begin to have a different idea of the relation between self and others. It is not that there are no good men and women in our nation. But I wonder how much does this sense of superiority contribute to the calls for a return of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago? How does this attitude of being merciful and charitable square with and perhaps even contribute to the reasoning that we should now arm our citizens? After all the call to arms is being made by one who advocated stridently for mercy for the sick, in particular children.

We arrive at a point here where the individual right to self-preservation takes precedence over all other rights. This is of course US President Donald Trump’s reasoning as well, and his justification for refusing the entry of refugees.

Finding shelter for those who have been rendered homeless and hungry by acts of war, terrorism, bigotry or natural disaster marks us as not simply as compassionate but as people who recognise that there, but for the grace of God, go I and because I have today does not mean that I will have tomorrow.

Much more important, it recognises that those in such desperate need are human beings like ourselves and not nameless faces that flicker across our television screens just before we watch our favourite soap. It is a difficult lesson in today’s faceless world of web interconnectivity and material affluence. There is another issue though that flows from performing acts of mercy without a recognition of equal and full humanity for all. For some, or maybe for most of us, giving is often accompanied by an unstated belief that something will be given in return. That something may well be that it will contribute to our status in the world and that there will be some form of recognition and applause for such acts.

In a world where politicians and leaders see themselves as celebrities and judge their success by their television ratings, giving may become a very calculated act indeed.

But then those to whom we give become mere extensions of ourselves.

And the means to our own self-glorification.

And after all it is of the essence of mercy that we do not succumb to the danger of self-aggrandisement. In other words, that we do not see ourselves as superior in any way and that we maintain true humility.

If as a nation we see ourselves as superior (after all God IS a Trini) and our entire education system is built around an idea of superiority, then where does this leave the child who must assert his role and his position in the world? If the rights of upward mobility and progress are so inalienably attached to the idea of a superior being in the world, then that must mean that individual rights must take precedence over all other rights.

If this is what we preach as a nation then this idea will seep down to the bully in the playground who must assert that superiority come hell or high water. So he stomps on the arm of a child who is unable to defend himself. Human rights are linked to other forms of compassion, such as the humility to forgive and to bear wrongs patiently and also to set an example through one’s actions so that the world actually begins to develop a mature sense of what being human truly entails.

Yet, the report says that the private sector “is not up to the challenge of supporting economic growth, creating employment, contributing to Government’s revenues in a significant way or improving the economic welfare of the nation’s citizenry.” The report also reminds us that only 14 percent of the onshore firms do some kind of exporting, and 65 percent of these firms derive less than 25 percent of their income from their export sales, while 4.32 percent of them derive greater than 75 percent of sales from exports.

Hence the energy sector that employs only four percent of the work force provides us with 90 percent of our foreign exchange. Indeed, 69 percent of the onshore firms are simply importers and resellers, supported by the foreign exchange earned by the energy sector. The aim of this report appears to be to advise on how the onshore sector should be encouraged to turn towards exporting.

What underpins the recommendations of the report is the following statement by the author: “Rather than refocusing efforts on cherry-picking or debating what sectors should be developed, a la vertical productive development, this report suggests that TT should employ structural policies that would improve the overall business environment and underlying macro-economic constraints, a la horizontal productive policies.” The horizontal policies recommended include macro and micro interventions by the Government that can provide a favourable business environment for firms that improve their research and development (R&D), access to financing, innovation and incentives to attract investments from foreign firms to invest in new technology, and a focus on continuously improving the infrastructure to support the non-energy sector. Still, the report tells us that the exporting firms are those that are large, young and foreign owned in the manufacturing sector (the iron/ steel plant was the main contributor).

However, most onshore firms in TT are small and medium size, mature, locally owned and operate in the services sector. The task then, according to the report, is how do we transform these firms into globally competitive exporters or encourage new ones? The report addressed the constraints that apparently restrict the adaptation of the onshore firms into exporters. The report suggests that the major contributors to this reluctance are the firm’s size, age, ownership and trading history (exporter or importer). Macro and micro-economic constraints are the second largest contributor; access to finance, crime, corruption, infrastructure, mismatch between education and firms’ requirements. Further, the report claims that the overvaluation of the TT $ is a fundamental constraint for both exporters and firms that cater for the local market.

Maybe there is a third contributor to this onshore characteristic of the firms.

Prof John Foster of the University of Queensland, Australia, in his paper, “From Simplistic to Complex Systems in Economics,” had this to say: “… an economic system is a complex adaptive system (with) the general properties … Such a system must exhibit some degree of structural irreversibility due to the inherent hierarchical and ‘bonding’ nature of the connections between components that are formed as structural development proceeds. It is this that results in the inflexibility and maladaptiveness that precipitate a structural discontinuity of some kind.” What Prof Foster is telling us is that our economy, a complex adaptive system, will exhibit a degree of structural irreversibility due to its history, which inhibits its ability to adapt to the current discontinuity of having to become exporters given the depletion of our natural resources and the global economic uncertain environment.

Our economy is, has been and was created to be a plantation in which the commodity sector (energy today) provides the exports and brings in the foreign exchange rents to the country, which are then used by the private sector to import the needs of the population. Our economy over its history has developed the inter-connections among its components that now exhibit structural irreversibility and an inability to adapt to the need to diversify into exports.

The horizontal policies recommended by this IDB report do not address this rigidity and incapacity of the non-energy sector to adapt. Recall that the Point Lisas investment was to encourage the local private sector to go downstream of the natural gasbased plants; this did not happen.

Recall again the abject failure of the negative listing era which was to allow the private sector to build things for the local market as a prerequisite to becoming exporters.

Also, industrial parks were built, tax incentives and small loans were given to firms and budding entrepreneurs, the enrolment in education especially at the tertiary level increased and public activity encouraged via a national competition. The rigidity and non-adaptiveness remain.

For decades I have been recommending along the lines of the Etzkowitz’s Triple Helix, a triad of government, R&D institutions and an embryonic private sector in a national innovation system to address a priori selection of technologies, even industries, in which we intend to become globally competitive. When such an approach is accepted by the public the conduct of a foresighting exercise has to take place to choose the areas of interest, an approach the IDB seems to be against, but which worked in Taiwan, South Korea, Ireland and even Norway.

Again, the Government has to be the investor of last resort given the risk averseness of the current financial sector.

He has not made any significant progress with crime reduction and the country is hurting as a result.

The Commissioner is also being evasive and fails to admit this messy crime situation is a crisis. The time has come for us to admit that our country’s approach to crime has failed and will continue to fail if we continue doing the same thing over and over again.

There is a point where political correctness does not cut it anymore. There is a point where spending money does not make the problem go away.

There comes a time when the rhetoric does not work and that time is now.

Our crime plan has to go beyond blaming citizens for not acting as a “mature and responsible society” and calling for cooperation with the police.

When asked about the upward spiral in murders, our Police Commissioner admitted there was a problem then shifted to say we are not in crisis and there was a 25 percent decrease in violence.

Are we to really accept this type of response when an average of two people were murdered a day in the first month of the year? This violence has obviously escalated into a serious problem of Mafia-style murders, kidnappings and an apparent reduction in people reporting acts of violence. People are scared and the authorities have to significantly change their approach to make citizens feel safe.

Where are we heading if our biggest budget item has consistently moved away from education to national security over the years? This year, for example, we are spending $7.625 billion on national security and $7.222 billion on education. However, the crime situation continues to worsen.

This is a negative indicator on the global scene. Should we really be asking why tourism is falling? The increased spending on national security now seems like a labour policy instead of part of a crime reduction policy. We are employing more people in national security yet we are not feeling safer or seeing any noteworthy reduction in crime.

In the midst of this crisis in crime, our commissioner has no recommendations or responses to the Government on critical national dialogue.

You don’t have to agree with all of the recent recommendations put forward in relation to crime.

However, there has been no meaningful dialogue on resuming the death penalty which already exists in our legislation, no dialogue on relaxing the stringent requirements for granting firearm licences, no dialogue on a strategic state of emergency, no dialogue on the anti-gang legislation and the list goes on. A crime detection rate of below ten percent is an indicator of who is really in control of crime.

Ag Police Commissioner Williams must do the honourable thing and step down.

He should not let history remember him as a failure but as a man who did his best and gave someone else the opportunity to help us all.

Ronald Huggins St Joseph

Ever so often I encounter carcasses on the highways. Sometimes in the middle or at the side of the road.

They give off a foul stench and look disgusting.

Most of them are carcasses of dogs that were abandoned by their owners. The carcasses pose a threat as they can cause accidents when motorists try to avoid making contact with them.

I am appealing to the powers that be to put a system in place whereby citizens can call and report animal carcasses on the roads so that a crew can be dispatched to remove them immediately.

The longer they remain is the more they would deteriorate and pollute the environment.

We are in the peak of the Carnival season.

A lot of visitors would soon be visiting our shores. I don’t think this is a welcoming sight for them.

RICKIE ELDER Piarco

Her entreaty was made at the TT Chamber of Industry and Commerce breakfast seminar on maximising export potential to the European Union through the EPA.

Gopee-Scoon noted that for Trinidad and Tobago ‘one of the main objectives of the Agreement is to encourage exports of non-energy goods to the EU market.’ “The Agreement allows domestic manufacturers to import raw materials and intermediate products at reduced duties, from the European Union. Thus, manufacturers have the assurance that they can obtain their raw materials without delay and at competitive costs without the imposition of high customs duties. In addition, it is the only Agreement that Trinidad and Tobago has signed, which contains enhanced provisions related to the services sector.

This augurs well for domestic service providers, who now have access to the European Union – a vast market with limitless possibilities that also serves as an alternative to the traditional markets of the USA, Canada and Great Britain,’ she said.

She also emphasised the importance of the EU as Trinidad and Tobago’s trading partner.

“For the period January to September 2015, the EU was our second- ranked export market, accounting for 12 percent of Trinidad and Tobago’s exports, behind the USA at 34 percent of total exports but ahead of CARICOM which stood at 11 percent of total exports.

However, it is notable that only three countries, namely Spain, France and the UK, accounted for 63 percent of our total trade with the EU.

“It is therefore necessary for local exporters to consider new markets outside of the traditional Western European economies and underscore the opportunities for Trinidad and Tobago’s goods and services to penetrate new markets in Eastern and Southern Europe,” she said.

Head of the European Union Delegation to TT Aad Biesebroek and Gabriel Faria, chief executive officer of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce both endorsed the minister’s call for greater utilisation and implementation of the EPA.

Cervical cancer is perhaps the most preventable, yet a recent study by the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 16 of the 18 countries for which data were reported, cervical cancer accounted for 4.5 percent to 18.2 per cent of cancer deaths.

Cancer remained the second leading cause of death in the Caribbean, where rates of death from cervical cancer, breast, prostate and colon cancer were two to nine times higher compared to the United States.

Executive Director, at CARPHA Dr C.

James Hospedales said the common modifiable risk factors that contributed to the development of cancers included tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol.

“There is strong evidence that a person’s risk of developing cancer can be substantially reduced through healthy lifestyles. A reduction in modifiable risk factors will contribute to a decrease in cancer cases, and as a consequence, deaths and costs from the disease in our Region,” he said.

This year, and through 2018, the theme for World Cancer Day (WCD) is “We can.

I can”, focusing on how everyone, collectively and individually, could do their part to reduce the global burden of cancer.

The three-year campaign, which started in 2016, outlined actions that communities and individuals could take to save lives by achieving greater equity in cancer care, and making fighting cancer a priority at the highest political levels.

CARPHA is encouraging persons to adopt healthier lifestyles to prevent cancer.

The agency urged citizens to avoid the use of tobacco, limit alcohol use, maintain a healthy weight, get sufficient physical activity, increase daily intake of fruits and vegetables to five or more servings per day.

Participation in screening programmes was strongly encouraged for prevention of cervical cancer and early detection of breast, colon and rectum cancer, and it was suggested that one should get vaccinated against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and Hepatitis B.

com, gmail.com and yahoo.com.

The ministry explained that through the use of fake Facebook profiles associated with the false email address, fraudsters are purporting that grants and loans are being offered by the ministry, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and similar bodies. To date, the ministry said it is aware of the aliases “Kathy Thompson” and “Melina Hayes” used by the fraudsters in this scam.

“In some instances, persons have been contacted by phone and then asked to provide personal information,” the ministry said.

The ministry called upon citizens to be vigilant and should any further clarification be required about the services it offers, to contact its corporate communications unit at 612-9700, extensions 2805/6/8/9 or visit its website at www.finance.gov.tt.

“Already two such schools have closed and the others are facing a similar fate.

The Private Special Schools Association has made extensive and diligent representation on behalf of the 14 institutions, but this has not yielded any positive results.” Alleging a cold-hearted abandonment of private special-needs schools, Gopeesingh said this is taking place after the People’s Partnership Administration had invested heavily in the education of these students. “The subvention was increased from $1,400 to $2,400 a school term for each student and the complement of professionals – psychologists, guidance counsellors and social welfare officers – was extended from 250 to 700.” Gopeesingh said special- needs learning was integrated into mainstream education as part of the People’s Partnership (PP) Government’s thrust toward an inclusive education system and lifelong learning. “The People’s Partnership Administration had carefully nurtured these important institutions through the building of relevant capacity. Adequate funding, provision of suitable qualified professionals and integration with the rest of the education sector were hallmarks of the PP Government’s stated commitment.” He recalled former United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton commending TT for includ- ing special-needs education within the mainstream sector, at a 2014 conference of the Inter-American Development Bank and the ALAS Foundation in Washington, DC.

“Indeed, the policies were part of an overall plan for reform of the education system and achievement of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. These are all being systemically undermined and unravelled by the bungling and incompetent Mr Garcia,” alleged Gopeesingh. “But even by Mr. Garcia’s own abject standards, the desertion of the special-needs students is atrocious and appalling.” Speaking in response to Urgent Questions in Parliament on Friday, Minister Garcia also denied media reports that there was any lack of funding for those schools.

He also denied reports that 14 special needs schools were in danger of being closed.

“These 14 special needs private schools are not in danger of imminent closure.” “There have been no cuts in Government’s funding for these schools.” The minister’s statements followed reports that the schools were in danger of closing due to a lack of funding, after a Memorandum of Understanding expired in 2015 and was not renewed.

It was also reported that no funds were provided for salaries or the paying of bills at these facilities, leaving the schools little choice but to close.

Speaking at a media briefing on the ‘Form One Initiative and the School Based Management Programme’ on Thursday last, Minister Garcia said there were ‘some challenges’: “There are some challenges that are faced by those 14 special schools, and I can assure you that everything is being put in place, so that those schools will receive the necessary funding.” “There’s the question of a Memorandum of Understanding that has to be signed between the operators of those schools and the Ministry of Education.” “Our department is working expeditiously to ensure that that Memorandum of Onderstanding is ready for signature by both parties.” “But the bottom line is that the challenges that we face will be overcome in the not too distant future.” “And I appeal to all those persons who have been providing a yeoman service to those special children, that they will receive the required funding shortly.” A petition was launched for funding to be provided to keep the schools open.

Among the tent’s cast of performers are Karen Eccles, Maria Bhola, Meguella Simon, Stacey Sobers, Alicia Martin, Empress Natty, Lystra Martin, Rae Ann Guerra, Josanne Rodriguez, Sherisse Collymore, Tenaj Smith and Cynthia Bastaldo.

The tent will open every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night until February 22.

Here are some of my favourite books.

Sailor Dance: The Story by John Donaldson – The Sailor Dance is an integral part of Carnival celebrations.

Check out the story of the dance and its history in this fascinating book by Eleanor Joye Donaldson. It’s full of anecdotes from people involved in the sailor dance.

Pancho’s Dilemma and Other Stories from the Cocoa Fields by Angelo Bissessarsingh – This collection of linked stories form a novella about the sleepy southern village of Erin and the magical history that defines it. The late author’s writing style, as witnessed in his history books, is colourful and exciting – tailor-made for fiction.

The Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalist’s Club Trail Guide – Written in collaboration with The National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago, The Field Naturalist’s Club Trail Guide includes descriptions of trails to hike in Trinidad and Tobago and maps that outline the trails. If you like hiking, this is the book for you.

Virtual Glimpses into the Past: Snapshots of the History of Trinidad and Tobago by Angelo Bissessarsingh.

From Corbeaux Town to San Fernando Hill, Angelo, who did so much to popularise the history of Trinidad and Tobago from his newspaper columns and his books, presents stunning pictures and action-packed stories of our nation’s history. The Merikins: Forgotten Freedom Fighters in the War of 1812 by Tina Maria Dunkley – This is one of my favourite books in my library at the moment because it is a simple and exciting history of the Merikins that children and adults can enjoy. It’s perfect for school projects and home libraries. The Merikins were runaway US slaves who had joined the British in the War of 1812.

When the British lost the war, they settled those slaves in Nova Scotia and Trinidad.

The Merikins… has exciting pictures and maps that bring the short essays in this book to life. The Merikins… should win a prize for layout.

It’s colourful, inviting, interesting, concise and reader-friendly for all readers– children, teens and adults.

Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony – Take a plunge into nostalgia and read Anthony’s novel about the teenager Shell as he navigates his way through his difficult teens after moving to Mayaro. Green Days by the River celebrated its 50th year in publication on January 26, and a movie is coming out later this year so you don’t want to miss reading this moving, coming-of-age novel with memorable characters who have stood the test of time.

My Whole Life is Calypso: Essays on Sparrow by Gordon Rohlehr – Dr Rohlehr, the foremost expert on calypso in Trinidad captures the essence of calypso stalwart The Mighty Sparrow, not only as a person and a calypsonian, but also as an important voice in Trinidad and Tobago’s independence movement