Staff will also be relocated temporarily from President’s House.

The statement alluded that the Ministry of Works had known about the threat but had failed to notify the Office of President.

Newsday called former works minister, Fitzgerald Hinds, whom upon being told of our query said he was in a urgent meeting and could not talk to us, and hung up, promising to call us back later. Asbestos, once employed as a fire retardant in building materials, has since been linked to cancer.

The Office of the President in its statement said it was recently advised by the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (UDeCOTT) of the presence of asbestos material at President’s House and its environs.

“In a swift move to determine its potential impact on the health of exposed employees numbering some 30, the Office of the President has advised that arrangements were made for medical evaluations of these employees tomorrow (Monday).” Those affected employees, who came into contact with the contaminated area on regular basis, will commence medical tests over a three-day period at the Industrial Medical Unit at the Eric Williams Medical and Sciences Complex (EW MSC), Mt Hope. “What is of grave and critical concern is that it appears that the authorities responsible for renovation of President’s House have been aware of this asbestos contamination for some time but failed to inform and alert the Office of the President of this hazard,” alleged the statement.

The Office of the President was made aware only late last week by a UDeCOTT document. “In a document dated January 12, 2017, UDeCOTT stated: ‘Please be advised, records provided by the previous Ministry assigned with the Restoration of President’s House – Ministry of Works and Infrastructure – indicate that the vinyl floor tiles within the laundry lining fabrics storage room, contains asbestos’”.

UdeCOTT then advised on the procedure the Office of the President must follow before the asbestos material can be removed,.

“UdeCOTT further advised that the logistic for temporary relocation of affected staff is being prepared for transmission to the relevant authority.” The Office of the President contacted the North-Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) to have the affected staff medically evaluated.

“NCRHA’s response was swift and commendable and workers will be evaluated in batches of eight to ten per day.” Apart from chest x-rays, workers will be tested in area of blood count, renal function, liver function and possible spirometry, the measuring of lung function and breath, if available at EW MSC.

Amid fears that other parts of President’s House could also contain asbestos materials, the Office of the President met a specialist team from Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI).

“The CARIRI team promptly carried out a preliminary visit of the facilities and committed to dispatch three technicians from the Industrial Materials Unit – Metallurgy, to carry out a detailed inspection of compound.” This team will carry out a visual inspection of the different materials present in the compound and determine which may be a suspect for future sampling.

“CARIRI noted that the team will need to have access to all roofs and ceilings, since these materials are prime suspects of containing asbestos fibres. Old visible water pipes are also of concern.” The statement said the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Department will be apprised of the situation today (Monday).

“Ensuring the health and safety of all employees and visitors to President’s compound is paramount and the Office of the President is committed to working with the relevant agencies to effect same.”

“We trying to change the way in which our oil and gas fiscal regime works so that we would achieve two objectives- motivate investors companies to get involved in exploration and development while we maximise our return from the petroleum sector,” Imbert said.

“Our oil and gas fiscal regime has been with us for many years and comes in two types, we have the standard exploration production license where taxation is based on petroleum profits tax, supplementary profits tax oil levy and then there is the production sharing license where after the company has recovered its expenses, the production shared between the government and the company,” he said, adding there were approximately 27 different types of production licenses.

Imbert continued: “We in the Ministry of Finance and also working together with the Ministry of Energy we will be moving very swiftly in first quarter of 2017 to seek to finalise discussion with all the players towards a new oil and gas fiscal regime so you can do the exploration and bring fields into production.” Imbert was addressing the completion of the fabrication of the topside of the Juniper offshore platform at the TOFCO Yard, Labidco Industrial Estate, La Brea yesterday.

And noting that government was also “moving swiftly to finalise the gas supply contracts”, Imbert noted that the Juniper platform, which would be sited approximately 50 miles due East of Mayaro, was expected to begin production in August with a production of some 500 million standard cubic feet per day. The Juniper platform is expected increase local gas production by some 14 percent.

“This new production and other project that BP have in such as the Trinidad Onshore Compression Project is due to come on-stream I’m told in a couple months, in April 2017 will help us, in no small way to stabilise the current gas supply situation,”Imbert said.

“It won’t solve our problem but we have another project which I expect BP will reach agreement with the government soon, that the Angelin platform, together with Juniper and Angelin together and the other developments you have planned, such as the pipeline from the Dragon field in Venezuela which is progressing very well, I’m told and we expect to get gas from there I would say in a couple years, I understand there are no facilities onshore in Venezuela to receive gas from Dragon so as soon as Dragon comes on stream and the pipeline is constructed we should be able to access gas from Dragon,” he noted.

The Dragon field is was also expected to supply another 500 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

He also noted that changes were also coming regarding the Supplementary Petroleum Tax and observed that while he was “very happy” that the price of oil was over US $50 per barrel, noted that some oil companies were “very unhappy” as their profit margin decreased at $50 per barrel.

“The way the SPT works is that it kicks in immediately at $50 so you have a situation where a company generally the smaller to medium sized company, can be profitable at $49 but as oil crosses $50 and goes into $52 and 53 and 55, the company has told us that they actually make less money between $50 and $60,” Imbert said, adding, “that means we now getting supplementary petroleum tax (SPT), which we don’t get when oil is less than $50.” “We are going to deal with that, we are going to address the way in which the SPT kicks in to make it a profit based tax rather than a volume or revenue based tax so that there would be a more equitable increase in the equity and this should encouraged some of our local companies to engage in greater production and in exploration,” he said.

With the death on Friday of 16-year-old schoolgirl, Rachael Ramkissoon, it is the second time in a month that innocence has become a statistic. The Northeastern College pupil clad in her school uniform was found strangled in bushes at San Rafael on Friday. She was on her way to school.

We offer our deepest condolences to Rachael’s loved ones, at this terrible time. We also urge people to desist from sharing online photos of Rachael’s corpse, as this serves no public good, but further traumatises her family and friends.

As a people we now collectively pause again, and ask why? Why would someone kill this child? And who? Who would do such an evil deed? Rachael was a bright and diligent pupil, studying hard, with ambitions to become a lawyer. Her death has shocked her close-knit community.

She was known to be experienced and cautious in travelling, and not one to get in a strange car.

Further, her death took place in the peaceful, rural setting of Brazil, a place not deemed a crime hotspot.

Again, who could have killed this child and why? Rachael’s death comes as we as a people still try to come to terms with the daylight murder of bank clerk, Shannon Banfield, 20, in a storeroom in the heart of the capital city.

Likewise, we still mourn the unsolved murder of Japanese pannist, Asami Nagakiya, 30, last Carnival at Queens Park Savannah, itself a busy locale. Just as Rachael was studious, so too Shannon was a dedicated to her church-life, even as Asami was a committed player at Phase II Steelband. All were loved.

Public vigils were held for Shannon and Asami, and will now surely also be held for Rachael. Where do we go from here? Firstly, we’d appeal to everyone to fully co-operate with the police investigation, to solve Rachael’s murder, rather than the double-pain of it remaining unsolved. Someone may well have seen something of significance that could just be the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that gives the vital breakthrough to solve this crime. We urge everyone in the San Rafael/Brazil area to mentally retrace their own movements last Friday and see if they recall anything out of the ordinary, particularly any motor vehicle with a driver behaving suspiciously, or any sighting of Rachael. Anyone with any piece of information, however insignificant, we urge to come forward. Close attention must be paid to conversations in case the killer lets slip an indication of his evil deed.

Details from the public are the police’s best chance to catch the killer.

More broadly, we as a society must ask ourselves some hard questions. We’d all like to dismiss such murderous impulses as an abnormality, but are there prevalent factors that feed it? Where does the callousness and desensitisation come from in warped minds, that grew up in a traditionally easy-going and friendly society? While the police must put the lid on rampant criminality by solving today’s crimes today and so also serve to deter tomorrow’s crimes – where is the criminologist to tell us from where does such predatory sociopathy arise? Is violence instilled is us from aggressive music, gory films, mindless video-games, pornography? Is our self-control being eroded by serotin-depletion, such as by the action of illicit drugs, or harmful food additives? Is it a whole culture of an easy-come/easy-go, typified by disposability, whether of disposable beverage-containers, disposable video-game characters, or now shockingly disposable human- lives? Even as we lobby for Rachael’s killer to be found, we also advocate for more to be done to identify risk-factors and predispositions to violent criminality, with a view to a timely aversion of their manifestation.

Then there is the reality that the propensity for such consumption is assiduously cultivated by the movers and shakers in the fast food industry particularly the foreign franchises peddling every variety of foreign foods through lavish advertisements and relentless propaganda.

That these foods are generally cooked at high temperatures in unhealthy fats with meats laden with disease inducing chemicals seem to be of little concern to Trinidadians.

In addition these meals are served with a drink of high sugar content – a factor in inducing diabetes. The advertised allure of joy, happiness and good times for family and friends is difficult to resist. It should also be noted that much of this advertisement is insidiously directed to kids. How many parents, even if they were so minded, could resist the insistent pleadings of their children. It would require an immense degree of discipline-a characteristic so sadly lacking in the population.

Then there is the problem of the taste for foreign food items among significant sectors of the population even where local alternatives are available. Such a preoccupation with foreign is deemed to denote status and modern living even as these foods are highly processed and laden with additives. To top it all, the per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages, much of which is foreign, is quite high and exacerbates the problems associated with lifestyle diseases as well as alcoholism. Any attempt by government to effect some measure of control or restriction on our penchant for unhealthy food and drink must confront the vested interests in the food and beverage industry which is easier said than done especially if such interests are heavy donors to the coffers of political parties.

Apart from education, there are perhaps other options available to policy makers to promote a healthier diet. Among them there is the crying need to address the cost and availability of healthy food items. If such foods are not readily available or are too costly, people will resort to unhealthier, less costly alternatives. Much has been said about boosting local production to provide the choice of fresh, healthy foods and yet little has been achieved as the food import bill continues to increase. It must be borne in mind that for the grocery owner it is much more convenient to handle, store and sell properly pre-packaged (i.e. generally foreign) items than to handle local goods of varying quality and unreliable supply. Much therefore has to be achieved to boost local production to meet the challenge of providing cost-effective healthy alternatives. The major ingredients in the much-touted Mediterranean diet are fruits, vegetables and fish all of which can be provided locally.

However, if an apple is cheaper than an orange or mango and carite sells for $50 per lb, then the local population would very well seek the cheaper foreign alternatives.

Government should also lead by example in promoting a healthy diet. For starters it could address the problem of providing healthy meals in the health institutions and schools a n d disallow the vending of junk foods on these premises.

“On the basis of this judgment, Mr R submitted a claim for payment of arrears of salary. Payment was never effected as the Ministry claimed then that his personnel file could not be located.” The Office of the Ombudsman drew the matter to the attention of the MOE Permanent Secretary (P.S.) on December 20, 2006. “By letter dated August 8, 2008, Mr R was informed by the Ministry that the judgments obtained by the other teachers were personal to them. The Ministry also stated that since his claim was made after the expiration of the statutory time limit in which such claims should be made, the department was under no obligation to compensate him.” However in 2010, the Ombudsman’s Office told the MOE that Mr R could not join his colleagues in the lawsuit due to a lack of finance.

Having reviewed the judgements in the lawsuit, the Office opined that Mr R, the only other similarly affected teacher, should receive equal treatment.

Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), political leader David Abdulah made the observation at a media conference yesterday at the party’s St Joseph road, San Fernando headquarters as he weighed in on the recent wage settlement between Petrotrin and the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU).

“Two things have to do be done for Petrotrin to become profitable- the first issue has to be the governance structure and speaking now for MSJ, one of the problems of our state enterprise sector is how the arrangements are put in place for the governance, not only at Petrotrin but right across the state sector,” he said.

“We propose that all the major civil society organisations, the Law Association, the Chartered Accountants Association, the Professional engineers, the trade unions, and others put up names of persons from within their membership and including women organisations and youth, put up names of persons who have the competence to serve on boards and it is from within that pool of persons who are nominated by civil society that the government will then appoint to the state boards,’ Abdulah said.

“In that way we would get decisions that are non-partisan, and those boards can continue in effect beyond the five year cycle of governments, because you have to build a continuity of decision making in order to get the right business decisions for the state enterprises,” he said.

And regarding the privatisation of state companies, he said this was the argument from private sector companies as they want to get a hold of the “assets that the state companies have in order for them to make more money, so privatisation transfers wealth from the state, which is all of us as taxpayers to a few people and they then benefit.” And regarding the increase in oil production, he said this would decrease the amount of imported oil and increased the refinery margins.

He said the Pointe a Pierre refinery had a capacity of 170,000 barrels of oil per day while local production stood at 45,000 barrels of oil per day.

And with the union agreeing to an interim increase of five percent, he said the “cost” of the strike would have been greater than the “cost of settling the negotiations.” “So that the losses to Petrotrin as a result of a strike would have been more than the amount of money than Petrotrin has to pay out in wages and salaries at this time,’ he said.

That was the message of Nicholas Lok Jack, executive Director of Associated Brands Industries Ltd, on Saturday at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business presentation of graduates of the class of 2016 at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of- Spain.

“International business is where it has to be today. The marketplace is no longer Trinidad and Tobago, is no longer the Caribbean, is no longer the region. It is everywhere we turn…, everywhere we meet, gather, congregate, there is opportunity,” he said.

Lok Jack stated that employees should be given the chance to expand their horizons and test their metal on their way to being professional business people.

Quoting American political activist Ralph Nader, he said “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” Therefore he encouraged employers to tap into their “high-potential” employees’ personalities, passions and beliefs, and give them the opportunity to do more. He also encouraged employees to volunteer for or request more responsibility, not expecting compensation, but to gain experience, recognition from employers, and to be instrumental in transforming your company and the country.

Similarly, Stephen Weeks, Public Affairs Officer, United States Embassy, noted that Trinidad and Tobago had enough talent, educational institutions, and human resources to succeed, grow and internationalise.

He told the 342 graduates that TT had an excellent education system and smart people like themselves but that they needed to continually adapt to change throughout their professional lives because the world would continue to become more complex and competitive.

Weeks stressed that the key to economic development and social justice was democratising education, creating greater opportunities for everyone, and to ensure that everyone is a lifelong learner.

“A more developed economy, a more internationalised economy will hopefully be able to spread the benefits of that education system to a wider population because, as we see in the States too, economic and social inequity can create serious social problems… which is much harder to address,” he said.

The event hosted by the National Youth Action Committee (NYAC), was held at the Daaga Hall, UWI, St Augustine before a very appreciative crowd.

Fifteen contestants battled on the calypso stage to be crowned a champion. The results of the competition will be released later this week. Standing out on the night were several contestants which included Kyle Cowie, Nicholas Ashby, Sasha Ann Moses, Mark Eastman, Jhevon Jackson and Wendell Goodridge.

Cowie who is no stranger to calypso competition and also competed in the STOC last year, gave another energetic performance.

Cowie who is a part of the ‘Itzabrand’ team organised by soca singer/songwriter Asten Isaac, showed that he is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

He paid tribute to the competition’s founder Makandal Daaga, with his ditty “Hail the Chief ”. In song, he listed all of the deceased human rights activist’s accomplishments.

Singing “Ancestors Freedom Prayer” with an extremely solid performance was Nicholas Ashby. Backed by images of slaves labouring on a sugarcane plantation, Ashby reminisced on the struggles that Africans endured. It was that endurance that sparked different woeful prayers for freedom. The competition got really interesting when Sasha Ann Moses sang, The Main Witness. Sasha’s performance started off a little unconvincing as her emotions didn’t match the lyrical potency of the song.

It wasn’t until the second verse that she immersed herself in the moment and ended the performance extremely strong. Her great ending was evident by the standing ovation that was given to her.

Jhevon Jackson truly entertained, as his performance included a cameo from soca mascot Uncle Ellis.

His song “Destiny” encouraged persons to do what they love and love what they do, without being sidetracked.

He referenced the theme of the song to the life story of Uncle Ellis, who up until December 2015 was still dancing in front of KFC, Port-of-Spain.

Uncle Ellis was first used by soca singer Yankey Boy as a prop at Soccer Fete. Ellis is now managed by another person and has released a soca song entitled “ I Doh Mind”.

The hook from I Doh Mind was used in Jackson’s performance.

By the time Wendell Goodridge (who was the final contestant) hit the stage, most had already chosen their winner. Goodridge, however gave most much to think about.

While his stage props were simple, his lyrical content was tremendously potent. His song focused on the ills of society and the blame game that everyone plays when the ills of the country are unresolved and continuous.

NYAC also hosts the Young Kings and Young Queens Competition.

They would be held on Feb 6th at the Queen’s Park Savannah and February 13th at Queen’s Hall.

The threatened boycott of Panorama and the decision by TUCO have generated a debate about the relevance of calypso today and the status of steelpan music. Many will agree indeed that the difference between vintage calypso and calypso today is vast. In fact they are two quite different species. On the one hand old time calypso was entertaining, catchy, stayed in your head and soul while still being up-to-date and providing relevant social critique. In fact many incisive calypsos analyzed our situation as postcolonial mimic men in ways that our writers might still envy and have remained indelibly carved on our communal consciousness. But calypsos today almost lead us to think that they, the calypsonians, take themselves as social critics so seriously that they forget that they are also both poets and entertainers. No wonder audience numbers are falling and the question is being asked about relevance .

So does this signal the end of calypso or that there is a need to recognise that everything changes and we have to adapt? It seems obvious that spending four hours listening to lack lustre calypsos is not the way to go. It also seems to make sense that the trinity of pan, calypso and mas needs to be reunited .

It seems undeniable that calypso is far from a dying art. It has influenced both novelists and other poets and we need only refer for proof to our own Earl Lovelace whose star boy in the most recent of his works, Is Just a Movie, is a calypsonian and commentator, or even Walcott’s very famous poem, “Spoiler’s Return”, which was set to music by the students of the Department of Creative and Festival Arts in 2010. And writers continue to use calypso as an example of what Brathwaite called “nation language”, that is a music and a rhythm that have emerged out of our experience of history and circumstance .

So if our calypsonians are our poets, then where is our respect for their art? After all if the influence has been so widespread and if calypso has already spawned new forms, then it is deserving of respect in the same way that we in literature pay homage to Homer or Shakespeare or even Langland as individual artists who created what we now consider to be contemporary art .

Strangely the word “respect” has cropped up several times in the past week. Pan musician Dane Gulston, a member of Trinidad All Stars Steel Orchestra, accused Pan Trinbago of “total disrespect all the way around to band members.” So precisely what does respect mean in these contexts? First of all it signifies an attitude that we seem to all share in TT that the past or what has happened in the past has little relevance to today .

After all, why must panmen suffer the indignity of having to beg and to wait for their well-earned money? Would any other sector allow this? But most of us know at some level that artists do what they do because they have a passion for what they do. This has led to the exploitation of the long-suffering artist who traditionally may starve .

But pan is something that is basic to our understanding of who we are, as Rawle Gibbons pointed out in his 2008 play Ogun Iyan as in Pan. Pan connects us to our roots. This does not mean that it is African, but that it locates part of our origins in Africa and pays tribute to the evolution of something called a national culture from multiple roots, as opposed to one .

But it does more than this as an indigenous art form; it manages, in a way that few of us can understand, to provide the motivation for hard work, endurance, persistence and continuity that nothing else has, to my knowledge, succeeded in generating amongst many of our young men and women .

As one activist colleague noted as we listened to a band practicing, if only we could figure out how to channel that energy into other spheres of existence .

It is to the credit of our UWI that the Department of Creative and Festival Arts under Rawle Gibbons made the steelpan the principal instrument of instruction, recognising that this was in itself a revolutionary move .

Our own Terry Noel, leader of Melodians Steel Orchestra, has been recognized in the United Kingdom for his use of pan as an instrument of instruction and as a way of mobilizing young people and equally for creating a forum for diversity. So maybe that lack of respect has more to do once again with our failure to pay tribute to those who have shaped our society and who continue to use artistic forms to create change within our society. Or maybe it is simply that we still lack self respect .

In failing to bite the bullet, we lost a golden opportunity to set the tone for industrial relations and fiscal rejuvenation of our economy. Instead, we are collectively looking down the barrel of a gun and might as well learn a lesson from our Venezuelan neighbours and stock up on toilet paper and loose dinero.

The stage was set for a ninety-day saving of the approximately $2 million daily subsidy by tax payers to the oil company.

We must remember that most countries function well without any petroleum resources.

By sheer attrition, all the goals espoused by the PM in his last address to the nation on this topic would have been automatically realised.

Has the OWTU learnt the ISPATT lesson? On the humane side, the workers should have been offered equity participation in the said company which handsomely looked after their needs over the years.

I can understand now why Americans chose the strong willed Donald Trump.

Can we retrieve the situation? I doubt. Captain, the boat is sinking!

Alto Daniel via email