Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh officially declared the ward open on Monday, although it has been operating since May 2016.

“This is a red letter day that enhances the experience of a patient, having to undergo anaesthesia whether local or general. It is a much safer product to deliver, patient satisfaction goes through the roof, and we also decrease the burden of taking up bed space, so it is a win-win situation for all,” he said.

The unit would provide treatments for gastro intestinal, thoracic and urological conditions. When before patients were required to be admitted to the hospital, now they could have same day surgery.

Deyalsingh said since the Endoscopy Suite was commissioned last year, more than 1,600 procedures have been performed.

“This would significantly reduce the demand for bed space, but we are still challenged for bed space and that is why we have to build the Pt Fortin Hospital, Arima Hospital and expand the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. The PoSGH central block would increase from 400 to 540 beds.

“We are building a hospital in Sangre Grande to take it from 150 to 200 beds. With the NCD (non-communicable diseases) burdens and other diseases, there will be a demand for bed space, so we have to look for innovative ways to decrease it,” the minister said.

Deyalsingh said this was the first endoscopy series that offered eight services. He said they had limited endoscopy services at some of the other regional health authorities and were trying out the system at the other RHAs.

“We will use this as a pilot. It is a cost effective way of delivering high-quality care at very low cost,” he said. Chief executive officer at the EW MSC Davlin Thomas said the initial cost of the equipment to treat with these health issues cost just over $1 million.

“It is certainly smaller than the cost of having to do surgeries or having overnight care with the surgical team that was required.

We saw ten patients today, so on average we see about 50 patients a week,” he said.

Deyalsingh said since the programme was started over 1,600 patients have been treated.

Asked why EW MSC was chosen as compared to PoSGH or San Fernando, Deyalsingh said, “We have space and we have the catchment area where people need this type of service. We could not have done it in PosGH knowing that we had to build a new central block there, so this was the obvious location,” he said. Asked if EW MSC was being fully utilised, Deyalsingh said he “believed so”, however adding that Government had “serious plans” for the health facility.

“All of that has to be approved by Cabinet. One of the things we need to look at is if we need to be triplicating serious tertiary intervention all over the island.

Trinidad and Tobago is small, we keep forgetting that and the way health services are being delivered now and should be delivered, instead of triplicating and quadruplicating advanced tertiary intervention at four hospitals, what you want to do is set up centres of excellence and that has been my thought pattern since I became Minister of Health,” he said.

The minister added that he would be looking at all options and advising Cabinet on how to proceed with the Couva Children’s Hospital. “We are looking for a way to best utilise it.

The Prime Minister when approving the note for rebuilding central block we were looking for all ways of recanting central block which has 400 beds and looking to Couva as a possibility.

Deenish Benjamin and Deochan Ganga challenged their convictions based on their mental capacity and the appellate court was asked to consider whether Benjamin, 36, and Ganga, 35, had the mental capacity to participate in their trial and to give police confessions to the crime.

Delivering a 43-page judgment, Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Appellate Judges Rajendra Narine and Prakash Moosai dismissed their appeal and held that both men were fit to stand trial for the murder of their cousin Sunil Ganga.

Benjamin and Ganga were convicted and sentenced to death on December 4.

Sunil died on July 12, 2003, after being beaten and hanged in a shed behind his Penal home, next to Benjamin and Ganga’s home.

During the trial, Sunil’s wife, Roseanne, testified she saw both men entering the shed before her husband’s death.

It was the State’s case that both men confessed while under interrogation from police, but they both denied that while on trial, claiming they were mistakenly identified by Roseanne.

In their ruling, the appeal court judges refused to quash their convictions and order a retrial but instead commuted their mandatory death sentences to life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years.

They may be released in 2033 as they have already spent 14 years in prison.

“We have considered the fact that both appellants were young men at the time of the commission of the crime and are still relatively young.

We are therefore minded to leave open the possibility of release,” Moosai, who wrote the judgment, said.

During the hearing of their appeal in February 2014, British mental health experts Drs Tim Green and Richard Latham were called as defence witnesses and claimed that the duo should not have been put on trial due to their learning disabilities.

“Notwithstanding an undisputed finding of mild learning disability, a legitimate criticism that can be levelled against the experts is their failure or omission to interview Benjamin’s family/or friends (and Ganga’s for that matter) to provide objective verification for a significant component of their diagnosis,” Moosai said in the ruling of the experts’ testimony.

The cousins were represented by Keith Scotland, Daniel Khan and Asha Watkins-Montserin.

According to his adopted mother, Iesha Jackman Archer, the 22-year-old man was inspired to go from block to block, preaching against violence.

Archer, who on Monday spoke to reporters at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, is now taking up her son’s mantle and calling on gunmen to stop the violence.

“These people don’t want to stop this killing!” said the mother.

“I forgive the people that did this to him, but what goes around comes around. Revenge is God’s own and His only.” Archer told Newsday her son was a witness to a murder last year.

He was questioned, but did not give up the killer, and was himself locked up in relation to the crime. Harrichand was released from prison about two months ago, but he came back a changed man, his mother claimed.

“He said he got a vision that told him to go to the criminals and tell them to stop killing each other. He would start going in places that he should not go because he is a Muslim – areas that I and all would not dare go – and preaching to the gunmen,” she said. At about 11.15 on Saturday last, gunshots were heard along St Paul Street, and Block Eight, in Laventille. Residents called the police and when they responded they found the bullet riddled body of Harrichand lying on the roadway.

This according to cultural activist Eintou Pearl Springer who again lamented the lack of local and especially local African history taught in schools.

Speaking to Newsday yesterday after the performance of her play, “Freedom Morning Come” at the Treasury building, Port-of- Spain, Springer said none of the country’s children knew anything about the history the play depicted so it was important that people fight the “foolish education system” that did not properly represent the history of the country.

“It is a crime that continues the enslavement of the mind…

(Marcus) Garvey said if you don’t know where you come from, how would you know where you’re going? Our children do not have any sense of who they are, what they went through, because it’s nowhere. It’s not in the schools, it’s not in the churches, it’s not on the television, so our people are dislocated from themselves.

It’s critically important.” She said crime did not occur in a vacuum, but that one of the reasons was when people felt “dislocated and disowned.” She said African people were treated like aliens and they feel like aliens because there were “no marks of remembrance or history.” “The presence of the African is not recognised in any of the place names, as if Africa had nothing to do with this city. There’s not even a placard on the Treasury Building to say the Emancipation Proclamation was read here.” In addition she said buildings important to the country’s African history were not being recognised as historical sites, while some were torn down, such as the home of lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams who organised the First Pan-African Conference in London in 1900. “Nobody seems to care about these thing. This lack of sense of self and non-recognition of the role of Africa is having an affect on the psyche of our young people.” Springer said part of the process of reparation must be the telling of the African story from the perspective of the African.

Hence, Freedom Morning Come, which commemorates August 1, 1834 when the Emancipation Proclamation was read.

The Emancipation Bill was presented in Parliament by Thomas Buxton in 1833 and it came into effect on August 1, 1834. The Bill gave the slaves apprentice status, rather than complete freedom, for a four- to six-year period and thousands of slaves gathered in front of the Treasury Building to protest.

The production highlighted six slaves who sat in front of the Treasury Building while waiting for the proclamation to be read.

The slaves heckled and jeered at the governor while he sat inside speaking to a representative of the planters and slave owners.

The two men sat inside complaining about the behaviour of the slaves, how they rejected the proposed plan of four years apprenticeship for domestic slaves and six years for field slaves.

They spoke of how the slaves were refusing to work even though they would work fewer days and get paid because they believed the crown granted them full freedom. They also spoke about how much money the planters were losing, how much money the planters would be paid for the loss of their slaves, and the plans to bring indentured labourers to fill the gap of the slaves once they were completely free.

Meanwhile, the slaves sat outside recalling some the evils they and other slaves experienced over the years, including being whipped, hanged and beheaded for trifling matters.

He said the Price Waterhouse Cooopers Project Rebirth plan was submitted on January 6 to the ministry but the shareholders agreement extension was only provided to the shareholders on February 23.

Carpenter said the shareholders do not draft the extension. In its statement, the ministry said the last extension to the shareholders’ agreement expired on August 31, 2016.

The ministry said the Project Rebirth plan was submitted four months later in January.

At a post-Cabinet news conference on July 27, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said “mischief-makers” are misrepresenting the facts about Government’s decision to petition the High Court to appoint a provisional liquidator for CLF.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert is expected to make a comprehensive statement this week in response to subsequent claims raised by the shareholders

The “Calypso Spikers” saved their best game for last as they started with high intensity and maintained that level from the start to finish.

The hour-long final saw TT overpowering the host team 25-12, 25-16, 25-10. TT ’s most experienced player Krystle Esdelle led the way with 14 points including 10 spikes and three aces.

Also contributing was Channon Thompson who retained her Most Valuable Player award this tournament with 11 points. Darlene Ramdin and Sinead Jack chipped in with 10 and nine points respectively.

Suriname defeated Guadeloupe for the bronze medal 3-1 (25- 15, 24-26, 25-17, 25- 22). The tournament`s top scorer Surinamese Sandrina Hunsel led her team with 31 points while Leslie Figere-Turiaf top scored for Guadeloupe with 19 points.

An elated TT captain Renele Forde said, “It feels great to be champions once again, it was a smooth final. I`m really proud of the team and their efforts because we played like the best in the Caribbean.” After collecting her MVP award for a second consecutive time Channon Thompson said, “It feels great but a pleasant surprise, I anticipated winning the best server award gaging from my performance throughout the tournament. I am happy, thank God of course, and my team for supporting me and I’m really happy to have contributed towards the ultimate goal of winning. None of the individual awards would have been possible without each other.” The 23-year-old Francebased player continued, “Special mention to the coach and technical staff for their guidance also to the Minister of Sports Darryl Smith for his words of motivation before the final match as well as the public Trinidad and Tobago for their fire, enthusiasm and support from Grand Prix straight to CAZOVA.”

TT will host one of the three groups of the FIVB Round Three elimination later this year. The first group will be staged in Canada from September 26-30; Trinidad and Tobago will host the second from October 4-9; while the third will be held in the Dominican Republic from October 11-16. The top two teams in each group will qualify for the 2018 World Championship that will run from September 29 to October 20.

Special Awards for TT players: Most Valuable Player/ Best Server/ Best Outside: Channon Thompson Best Blocker: Sinead Jack Best Opposite: Krystle Esdelle.

Both days are important to remember but there is a particular significance to linking our national heroines and heroes with that moment in history when we decided to embrace nationhood fully. How that has worked out for us thus far calls for a deeper analysis for another day, but the sentiment that the President seeks to engender in us is in fact our independence; our ability as a nation to define our path in our own best interest quite separate from the dictates from the political ties of a former time. I have no doubt my mother, a West Indies Federalist to the end, would approve.

The problem is we have allowed so much to clutter our vision for ourselves; we are running forward to 2020- or now 2030- carried along by the cheering rhetoric of politicians without pause to take stock of where we are going or, for that matter, what we are running from.

As significant days go, July 27 has claimed a place in the history books of Trinidad and Tobago for the events of that and the ensuing six days. The 1990 attempted coup was clearly a stock taking moment. The Commission of Enquiry some twenty years later by no means satisfied the imperative of stock taking.

The question for contemplation really is whether the state of the nation at the time was so beyond democratic remedy to lead the perpetrators to believe their actions were justified, or was the coup just a dramatic, and ultimately foolhardy, way of dealing with their particular vexation with the government of the day? That can be debated ad nausea but as Wesley Gibbings quite insightfully points out in a recent article, the facts as recalled by some have become the dominant narrative and so embedded that it is hard to imagine there is space for other perspectives. All of human history is like that though, based on the record of those who had a voice at the time of the retelling.

Despite the irony, one can hardly disagree with Abu Bakr’s public sentiments about the state of criminality in the country, which is indeed far worse now than it was when he led the assault on the democracy back in 1990. But does that mean we are likely to experience another attempt at a violent take over? Not necessarily.

I would imagine that there are intelligence personnel from this and other countries closely monitoring the situation in Trinidad particularly given the upheavals taking place in Venezuela. Many factors have to be in place before the kind of “civil disturbance” feared by some could come to pass, not least of those a unifying political agenda to bring together all the disparate criminal groups.

Are there groups out there that, along with busying themselves with the violent claiming of turf for quick economic gain, have aspirations of taking over the reigns of governance? If so, are the groups unified enough to be of singular purpose? It is hard to imagine at this point, however, that being said, there are worrying signs that the “haves” and “have nots” are being defined along ethnic lines which raises the specter of racially motivated criminality. Whether this is the case or not, the fear that one could be at risk just for belonging to one ethnic group or other has already begun to take hold. When did it come to this?

We are witnessing the birth of a dictator. With his newly-minted assembly, established under dubious authority, Maduro will simply continue his bloody quest to silence opponents, thereby ensuring the end of free society. If there was any doubt as to his intentions, the events of the last few days have clarified them.

The ink was hardly dry on Sunday’s shambolic vote when Maduro made a speech threatening to jail opposition legislators and promising to restructure the office of attorney general Luisa Ortega, who has become a vocal critic of his government. “Some of them will end up in cells facing justice, while others will end up in a psychiatric ward because they have shown clear signs of insanity,” Maduro said on Sunday night. “We must impose order.” By “order” Maduro appears to have meant the removal of Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma, opposition leaders, from their homes in the dead of the night. Both had been under house arrest and lawyers said there was no clear legal basis for any change in this status. “12:27 in the morning: the moment when the dictatorship kidnaps Leopoldo at my house,” López’s wife, Lilian Tintori, wrote on Twitter.

Vanessa Ledezma posted a similar video of Ledezma. In the footage, women are heard screaming as men dressed in uniforms indicating they are from Venezuelan intelligence agencies take Ledezma away in pajamas.

The situation is not likely to be helped by the announcement by the US, of sanctions and the threatening of further oil industry measures. Such a move simply plays into the hands of Maduro who has dismissed all opposition to him as being orchestrated by US forces. Additionally, the proposed sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry are likely to further cripple the Venezuelan economy. Such a move is likely to hurt the Venezuelan people more than Maduro who has a strong hold on all of Venezuela’s key institutions.

However, the US is not alone in its condemnation. Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Paraguay have already said they will not recognize Sunday’s vote. Maduro said Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua have expressed support. Russia also expressed support for Maduro and in a thinly-veiled warning to the US said it hoped that countries which “apparently want to increase economic pressure on Caracas will display restraint and abandon their destructive plans”.

Trinidad and Tobago and Caricom cannot condone any process that dismantles democratic values and silences the will of the people.

While we have always upheld the principle that no country should interfere in the sovereign affairs of others, and while we may disagree with the imposition of financial sanctions, we cannot condone Venezuela’s descent into totalitarianism. Hundreds of people have died in protests and attacks over the last few weeks and the situation is getting worse by the day.

Caricom, as a block, has called for a peaceful solution, offering to mediate. But such an offer is conditional on all parties approaching any mediation process with good faith.

The extra-judicial removal of opposition figures from house arrest would suggest the conditions of any engagement now need to be redrawn.

Caricom must act urgently and cannot afford to stand by as a dictator takes complete control.

As part of the committee’s Pan African Festival programme, the event saw hundreds of children participate in educational workshops on rapso, drama, stilt-walking, African drumming and storytelling to name a few.

The event was conducted by the Youth Arm of the committee, with Programme Officer at the ESCTT, Kadija Dyer coordinating the event.

The Savannah was outfitted with various tents where the workshops were held and established boards with educational information on great Pan African thinkers and leaders such as Marcus Garvey and Nnamdi Azikiwe.

Speaking with Newsday at the event, rapso artist and conductor of the rapso workshop Curious Ringo, Rae-Anthony Samora, said the Youth Day serves as an educational one-day camp for the children. “These children are very energetic and this program is to get them interested in culture.

They need guidance and more programmes like these are needed throughout the entire year,” he said.

He added that there were not enough ventures in the country to showcase the dynamic nature of African culture to children.

Samora believes programmes that educate and involve children in cultural activities can “definitely” reduce crime. He also said, “They need to see that there are avenues for them to express themselves and they need to know that these avenues can open possibilities for them. It’s like unleashing a hidden talent. Through these types of programmes, we can help them express themselves.” Asked if African culture is appreciated in Trinidad and Tobago, Samora said, “Yes but not enough. Everybody has a part to play in the appreciation of the culture. We can’t lay the blame on just the Government or just the people. It’s a lack of knowledge as well. We put down the mantle and then pick it back up and every time we do that, it’s a long process.” On the topic of rapso, Samora said the genre isn’t played enough to be well known. “Rapso is local rap.

The chantwell or call-and-response element of it is used in almost everything; from soca to protests. Now, money and spotlight are not the love of the art but the genre isn’t played enough for people to recognise it.” Samora added that children need to be empowered to speak, especially during the prevalent violence against them. “That’s what rapso does; empowers you to speak. Not knocking the other elements because drama helps you express yourself and face the world, storytelling is important and music helps you connect with other things.”

However, my focus is the need to give awards to ageing contributors, many of whom are in life’s departure lounge.I was deeply distressed when several national standouts in my pet fields of Culture the Arts and Sports went to meet Jesus without national recognition. Among them calypsonians Brigo( Samuel Abraham) Lord Smiley, Earl Crosby(music producer) and fabulous. jazz singer Patti Rogers. Before this year’s awards, we have ample time to get our house in order. Committee chairman, Mr Ivor Archie, who lives in Trinidad and Tobago and whom I think reads newspapers, should know of these legendary performers in calypso, pan, dance and sports.Their contributions need no introduction.

So with utmost humility, I wish to nominate for the Order of Trindad and Tobago(ORTT ) your favourite and mine….Calypso Rose (Mc Cartha Sandy Lewis), the innovative Shadow (Winston Bailey) and the long disrespected pan supremo Earl “Barney” Rodney composer, pannist and arranger of Solo Harmonites.

Neville Jules, arranger of the famous Trinidad All Stars. Carol La Chapelle( Dance and academics). It is no use having the medals and not handing them out to our deserving heroes.

Let us not wait. Other notables for medals to be decided by your august body are: calypsonians Crazy (Edwin Ayoung); Superblue (Austin Lyons); Explainer(Winston Henry); Bajan/Trini to the skeleton Singing Francine (Francine Edwards); Trinidad Rio (Daniel Brown); Ellsworth James (singer, composer, music promoter) and Sonja Dumas(dance).

Michael Paul (boxing and community service). Come on readers, send in your nominations.Help make the work of the National Awards Committee easier. Stay tuned for more!

Keith Anderson via email