Unions representing cash-strapped BWIA workers will make no more concessions until the airline says how it will settle the outstanding $57 million severance debt to retrenched workers. The Aviation Communication and Allied Workers Union, Trinidad Airline Pilots Association and, Communication Transport and General Workers Trade Union had previously agreed to give up benefits to assist BWIA in reducing its expenses. Following a meeting yesterday with Chief Executive Officer of BWIA, Nelson Tom Yew, (ACAWU) President, Christopher Abraham, said the unions have decided not to make further concessions until an agreement is reached for the payment of workers’ severance.

Approximately 300 workers are owed money. BWIA Communications Manager, Clint Williams, said the airline is giving the severance issue priority. He said the money will have to come from the $117 million which government will give BWIA to settle its expenses. The Board of the airline has until the end of this month to advise government on private sector shareholders in interim financing of the airline.

One hundred and twenty persons have been kidnapped for the year so far, and officers of the Anti-Kidnapping Squad said yesterday that they have not received any new leads in the kidnapping of the last five: Yves Ayoung Chee,18; Benedict Bharath,18; Mark Samlal, 20; his girlfriend Kendra Kissoon, 19 and Damien Schneider, 35. All five kidnap victims remained in the hands of kidnappers up until late yesterday. El Socorro father of one, Darryl Chootoo, who was kidnapped by two armed men from his El Socorro home is feared dead, while Marc Prescott, 10, of San Fernando, who was kidnapped from outside his school is believed to be with relatives in North America. Yesterday, a female relative of Bharath told Newsday that the family is praying for his safe return and added that they could not say anything more at this time. Newsday learned that Ayoung Chee’s relatives had been given until Sunday to pay a ransom. however, no ransom was paid and Ayoung Chee, along with his friend, Bharath, remained in the hands of kidnappers.

Ayoung Chee and Bharath, students of St Mary’s College, were kidnapped around 5.20 am last Thursday after leaving Club Coconuts. Samlal and Kissoon were also kidnapped last Thursday in front of Samlal’s Silver Mill Street, San Juan home. A $6 million ransom has been demanded for the release of the two. On Saturday, two Laventille men were arrested in connection with Schneider’s kidnapping. A $2 million ransom has been demanded for his safe release. Up until late yesterday, the two suspects were not charged. Police officers told Newsday that this is the first time that five kidnap victims are outstanding. Officers claimed that kidnappings are now so well organised that the police are unable to make any real breakthroughs in the investigations and they are calling for more resources to deal with the spate of kidnappings.

“It is possible for us to move the country forward free of anti-social barriers,” including barriers of race and class, asserted Joan Yuille Williams, Minister in the Ministry of Community Development and Gender Affairs. Williams was the feature speaker at a conference on Monday 21st July at the Office of the Attorney General which marked the signing of funding agreements by the Community Development Fund (CDF) and the launch of the John John Community Enhancement and Regeneration Programme. She remarked that she experienced a sense of pleasure and enjoyment from the “feeling of partnership and commitment” derived from the concerted efforts of the communities alongside the funding agencies. The principles of “commitment, care, collaboration and partnership” were clearly adopted, she said, with each group working towars poverty alleviation and the elimination of its ills. She indicated that the Social Sector Co-ordinating Committee chaired by the Prime Minister has examined in excess of 120 projects and a poverty alleviation and social services sub-committee has been established.  This committee includes among its aims the creation of profiles of the poor, examination of income and expenditure patterns, examination of gender inequity, development of research to evaluate and monitor poverty, analysis of how poverty relates to crime and the tracking of global trends.

Williams asserted that poverty is “the enemy of progress” which “enslaves” and “dehumanizes,” and advised that communities should “let poverty be a motivator to enfranchisement and success rather than depression.” The John John Community Enhancement and Regeneration Programme involves the transformation of the site known as the Spree Simon park under the creative direction of architect Andrew Mc Farlane. The project is not merely about the park alone, Mc Farlane said, but “the enhancement of a way of life and a continued way of life.” The design includes a sunken water feature, a proposed cafe, platforms for statues, easily maintained hard and soft surfaces, a small amphitheatre area, a barbecuing area, ficus plants and other forms of landscaping. Safety and convenience are key design factors as apparent in the safety rubber mats under swings, the stainless steel benches that will not peel like painted benches, a superintendant’s unit with first aid supplies, ramps for the disabled and a toddlers’ pit filled with air-balls.

FORMER Health Minister Dr Hamza Rafeeq yesterday disclosed that a meeting did take place between a Cabinet sub-committee and a group of doctors prior to the December 2001 elections, but no agreement was made to give doctors a $40 million backpay. Speaking during debate on amendments to the Medical Board Act in Parliament last Friday, Planning Minister Dr Keith Rowley said a clique of doctors met with the Cabinet’s Finance and General Purposes Committee and directly negotiated the backpay. Rowley slammed the UNC and the Medical Professionals Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MPATT) for staying silent about the deal while publicly saying there were no arrangements in place to pay the doctors. Rafeeq accused Rowley of “playing political games” and said the doctors simply “made a presentation” to the committee.  He said the final decision regarding payment of doctors’ salaries would have been a joint decision of the committee and the Cabinet.

The former minister said by making their presentation to the committee, the committee would be guided in making the appropriate recommendation to Cabinet. He said Rowley was wrong to say the doctors’ action was “a first” because several other classes of public officers made similar presentations while the UNC was in office. Rafeeq stated that doctors’ contracts were coming to an end in December 2001, negotiations had been going on for a year and the UNC did not want to leave them in limbo. He further stated that doctors did not automatically receive salary increases but these came with performance appraisals attached. The Caroni Central MP dismissed Rowley’s allegations about a secret agreement being hatched, and that doctors in the Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) were represented by the Public Services Association (PSA) at the time. Rafeeq’s former colleague, Mervyn Assam, said the committee could not authorise the payment of doctors’ salaries and this authority lay within the ambit of an Inter-Ministerial Committee in consultation with the Chief Personnel Officer. He said two members of that committee were former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, and former Finance Minister Gerald Yetming. Assam stated that Yetming was also chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee in December 2001.

A FORMER United National Congress (UNC) government minister said no Cabinet sub-committee had the authority to strike a deal with the nation’s doctors to increase their salaries. This was the revelation yesterday from Mervyn Assam who was a member of the Cabinet’s Finance and General Purposes Committee which is said to have negotiated a $40 million backpay with a certain clique of doctors prior to the December 2001 general elections.

Speaking in Parliament on Friday during debate on amendments to the Medical Board Act, Planning Minister Dr Keith Rowley disclosed that the People’s National Movement discovered the agreement when it came into office. Dr Rowley said this secret deal lay at the heart of all the turmoil in the health sector last year and this year. The minister slammed both the UNC and the Medical Professionals Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MPATT) for publicly saying there were no arrangements to pay doctors’ salaries, when in fact there were. Rowley declared the issue was not about race or political affiliations. “It has to do with a group of public officers being able to negotiate their terms and conditions directly one on one with the Cabinet,” he said. While he could not recall whether such an arrangement was made at the time in question, Assam told Newsday that a committee could not negotiate directly with any group of public officers.

NATIONAL Alliance for Recon-struction (NAR) Political Leader Lennox Sankersingh yesterday declined to comment on reports that he is tipped to be deputy chairman of the UNC-controlled Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regi-onal Corporation. Sankersingh told Newsday that “he was still having talks” on the matter and preferred not to comment at this time. Asked if he had made contact with NAR Tobago chairman Christo Gift about the decision to continue the party’s alliance with the UNC following Local Government Elections, Sankersingh said he had not. Gift has accused Sankersingh of  “selling out” the NAR to its former coalition partner and the NAR leader said he would meet with Gift once the elections were over. In a Newsday story, Sankersingh was listed as one of three persons with NAR ties who were tipped for top positions in three UNC-controlled regional corporations. 

Former Ambassador Suruj Rambachan and Director of the Land Settlement Agency Dr Allen Sammy seem set to replace Orlando Nagessar and Carl Debideen as heads of the Chaguanas Borough and Penal/Debe Regional Corporations respectively. Nagessar said he was not troubled about being replaced as mayor and his main priority was the rebuilding of the UNC following last week’s elections. UNC chairman Wade Mark said the party had to make further consultations before releasing its final list of chairmen and aldermen. The UNC and NAR made an arrangement prior to the elections to appoint at least one NAR alderman to any corporation which it controlled.

With the dust still settling from last week’s Local Government election campaign, a former attorney general has reiterated that the problems facing society were not going to be solved by either of the two major political parties. Addressing a forum of the National Committee for the Prevention of Homelessness and the Workers Action Committee at the Tarouba squatting area on Sunday, former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj said that the escalating crime and kidnapping rates coupled with the security of land tenure were being ignored by Government who was allowing “poor people to ketch hell in Trinidad and Tobago.” Maharaj, who is also the lead attorney for the Tarouba squatters in their battle with the NHA over land rights at the area, said that while squatting was “unlawful”, Government had a duty to provide shelter to the less fortunate in society. “The law of the land is that if a squatter squats on land and the Government knows and doesn’t go to Court for possession of the land then it has acquiesced — it has agreed that the person could occupy the land temporarily, and the law is that the Government cannot move and use the remedy of ‘self-help’ with bulldozers, and break down the house,” Maharaj said.

“The law is there to protect the rich, the poor, and the squatters,” he added, and reiterated that if the July 30 High Court ruling went against the squatters, the matter would be taken to the Court of Appeal and, if necessary, all the way to the Privy Council in London. Maharaj also slammed Government’s handling of the spate of kidnappings in the nation, saying that “kidnappers may soon take over the country” as TT had developed the “highest rate of kidnapping” in the Western Hemisphere he identified his own strategy for bringing an end to the kidnapping spree, which was pre-emptive action by the AKS. He warned that if the present trend was allowed to go unchecked, “families, business people and even political parties” would resort to kidnapping as a means of getting rid of opponents. Maharaj declared that a new social transformation movement, from the grassroots up, was needed to change Trinidadian society.

A HEARTBROKEN man committed suicide moments after he learnt that a married woman, with whom he was involved, had reconciled with her husband. Within half an hour of learning of his girlfriend’s decision, 32-year-old Jainarine Jagoo, of Penal, drank a large volume of a poisonous substance and died mere minutes later. His friends told police that around 7 pm on Saturday, they were liming at a bar in Penal when someone told Jagoo that his girlfriend, who had separated from her husband sometime ago, had reconciled with her husband and moved back to her matrimonial home.

Jagoo reportedly became depressed and asked to be left alone as he walked across to a nearby shed. When he didn’t return, around 7.30 pm, his friends went to the shed where they found him lying on the ground, frothing. A bottle containing a poisonous liquid was found near his body. He died before the EHS paramedics arrived. District Medical Officer, Dr Ian Furlonge viewed the body and ordered its removal to the mortuary of the San Fernando General Hospital where a post-mortem is carded for today. PC Lal of the Penal CID visited the scene and is continuing investigations.