Two men were shot while playing cards outside a house at Blitz Village, Pleasantville yesterday morning. According to police reports, around 3 am, Kevin Stewart, 25, and Keno Nicholas, 26, of Pleasantville, were playing cards when a gunman approached them and opened fire. Stewart was shot on his hip while Nicholas was shot on his left hand.

“INDIANS AND AFRICANS  are part of one big family in Trinidad and Tobago.”

Prime Minister Patrick Manning said so at the Divali Nagar Site on Friday, May 30, at the Indian Arrival Day celebrations of the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC) before a fair-sized crowd. He stressed: “So often we have seen in Trinidad and Tobago groups and individuals who have acted, as indeed they ought to have done, outside their natural ethnicity, to bring relief, development and progress to the people of the country.”  “That is what family is about,” Manning added. “Sometimes we are given so often to talking about Africans and Indians in Trinidad and Tobago that we behave in effect as though no one else matters,” the Prime Minister said. He extended Indian Arrival Day greetings “to all of you gathered here, those in their homes, and our highways and bye-ways, and to all our citizens near and far, in our country at present and in places abroad.”

Manning said that Indian Arrival Day was a national holiday “notwithstanding the fact that the occasion centres around the experience of a particular group who made a historic and fateful journey to the Caribbean and who is now part of a considerable number of people of our nation.” His Indian Arrival Day greeting was meant for “everyone no matter what station or walk in life, and of whatever persuasion or whether you are Indian, African, Chinese, Hindu, Baptist, Roman Catholic, man, woman or child.” He commended the NCIC for their outstanding work over the years in promoting cultural activities and saluted their efforts on behalf of the Government and people of Trinidad and Tobago. Manning said that he was keenly interested in all organisations that work for the welfare and interest of the people of the country.

He praised a former Minister of Education, Roy Joseph for his efforts in bringing to parliament a petition that led to the incorporation of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha in 1952 and he wished to remind the audience that “Roy Joseph belonged to neither of the major ethnic groups in the country but he worked in the interest of all. “And I tell you this in a context in which it has now become fashionable to cast racial slur and to direct invectives against non-Africans and non-Indians in our parliament and I state, that is not how we treat members of the Trinidad and Tobago family.” “In the same way, the national community is duty bound to relate to our East Indian national family members with a right national spirit which is to be respected in relation to all amongst us,” Manning stressed. “And on the other hand, there are those who refuse to see in our national celebration anything but a negative agenda on the part of those who would celebrate,” he added. Manning stressed, “Let it be known that these are attitudes and perceptions that constitute disinvestment and which we could do without.”

The prime minister emphasised, “That time is now at hand when all around us must let suspicions and mistrust give way to appreciation, respect, love and understanding.” He noted the “presence of East Indians in Trinidad and Tobago has been a constructive engagement as they continue to make an invaluable contribution to the development of our nation and we are grateful for the preservation and passing on of various aspects of their traditions, cultural norms and institutions.” Manning was also convinced that “the East Indian fellow citizens are as integrated as any other into all aspects of national life.” He noted, “Today, rare is the citizen who really and truly does not feel or see himself as part of our nation, but this is not to say that there are no challenges.” He touched on countries like Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Fiji, Australia and said that “what separates us from them, lock, stock and barrel is that even where there are those that continue to deny or ignore it, we have long been embracing the plurality of our diversity and are increasingly better off for doing so.”

Manning said that in “Trinidad and Tobago we have been long opening the way for the fuller participation of all the groups in our society.” The prime minister further emphasised, “It is now for us to show ourselves as a nation fully appreciative of the merits of our cosmopolitan make-up and determined to demonstrate to the world that groups of different backgrounds can both live together and progress in peace and harmony, on the basis of genuine understanding, appreciation, and love and respect for each other.” He quoted passages from the Ramayana (Holy Book of the Hindus) and said, “Jahaa sumatee tahaa sampatee nana,” meaning, “Through unity, prosperity and progress flourished unceasingly,” and further stressed, “Aagay Chalay,” which is interpreted to mean, “Let us move forward together.”

PUNDIT Deokienanan Shar-ma, president of the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC), feels that the Trinity Cross as the nation’s highest award, should be replaced by a symbol that truly  represents the plural society of the country.  He said that was one of the reasons “why the NCIC has not been recommending anyone for national awards.”

He was speaking at the Indian Arrival Day celebrations of the NCIC, on Friday evening, which was well-supported by the New India Assurance Company Limited, at the Divali Nagar Site, and in the presence of Prime Minister Patrick Manning when he made the point forcefully. He noted that the Trinity Cross had a Christian connotation and that it was not truly representative of the population of the country and he could not understand why the powers that be were so reluctant in changing it. It was damaging to the country where  people of various races and religions have been living together for many years, he said.

Pundit Sharma also called for a review of the allocation of State resources for East Indian cultural groups across the country, in relation to what others receive, and said that Indo-Trinidadians constitute a substantial portion of the citizenry and the time had come for a more equitable distribution of funds to assist the growth and development of East Indian cultural heritage in Trinidad and Tobago. Virendra Gupta, Indian High Commissioner, said that India and Trinidad and Tobago had a long, rich history of cultural and economic exchanges and he was optimistic that the bonds of friendship between the two countries would grow stronger in years to come.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning has said the Equal Opportunity Act would not be implemented until Government had reviewed and amended it, but Sunday Newsday understands that the Act is actually in force as the law of the land.

Attorney Garnet Mungalsingh, acting for Disabled People International, took issue with Manning’s claim that the Act had not been proclaimed. At Thursday’s post Cabinet Press Conference at Whitehall, Manning had asserted: “Some amendments must take place to the Act before it is implemented.” Representing the disabled protestors who had been assaulted outside National Flour Mills (NFM) while demonstrating for employment, former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj has threatened to bring a constitutional motion to compel the Government to implement the Equal Opportunity Act to protect the disabled.” His colleague, Mungalsingh, said: “The Act has been assented to and proclaimed.” “That’s what our constitutional motion is about. We have been calling for the appointment of an Equal Opportunity Commission and Equal Opportunity Tribunal. The Government must obey the rule of law and implement it. We filed a constitutional motion on Thursday afternoon. It will be heard on July 1 at the Fifth Civil Court, Port-of-Spain.” “There is no commission or tribunal to which they can take their complaints. People are being discriminated against and the protection of the law has been taken away from them.” “If the Act requires an amendment, amend it later, but the law must be obeyed meanwhile”. Sunday Newsday obtained a copy of the legal notice, under which the Act had been implemented.

The Bill was proclaimed in a Legal Supplement Part B, Volume 39, Number 230, 20th November, 2000, as legal notice number 285, number 26 of 2000. The proclamation stated: “I Ganace Ramdial, Acting President, as aforesaid, do hereby appoint the 20 day of November 2000 as the date on which Part VI of the Equal Opportunity Act 2000 comes into force and the 31 day of January 2001 as the date on which the remaining Parts of the said Act shall come into force.” Sunday Newsday contacted former President of the Senate, Ganace Ramdial, and read out the legal notice to him. Based on this, he confirmed the Equal Opportunity Act was indeed in force as the law of the land, saying: “It has been proclaimed and so it is law.” Attorney General, Glenda Morean, acknowledged the Equal Opportunity Act had been passed, but said it could not currently be implemented. She said the problem existed in the section of the Act responsible for setting up the Equal Opportunity Commission and Tribunal.Morean said: “The composition of the tribunals needs  to be amended. I have an officer working on it. An officer had given me a report but it wasn’t satisfactory, so I have a different officer taking a fresh look”.  She said the Government thought the Bill was important but said it also had so many other Bills to urgently legislate.

Morean explained that Parliament had been busy passing the Finance Act, Summary Courts Act and a Bill about the leasing of State land. “Parliament takes a long time debating, as everyone wants to have their say, for example on the Kidnapping Bill, which itself had to be put back for us to do the Civil Aviation Bill which was urgently required to put our civil aviation system in order.” Pressed as to whether the Equal Opportunity Act was in force, she said: “There is an Act passed and in effect, but you can’t continue — like the Sentencing Commission Bill — because it can’t work.” “There is a lot of legislation on the books but which can’t be implemented. Mr Maharaj knows that.” Morean concluded: “We need to look at the whole thing, re-engineer the Act properly. That is being done.”

A magistrate exceeded her jurisdiction when she jailed a man for 36 months and 28 months to run concurrently on summary convictions on charges of possession of arms and ammunition respectively. The maximum sentence is two years.

It was Justice of Appeal Anthony Lucky who pointed out the magistrate’s error in the Court of Appeal on Friday, and had to vary the sentence accordingly. Attorney Cecil Pope was at the time protesting to the Court of Appeal that the three-year sentence of Garfield Charles for possession of arms and ammunition was too severe when Justice Lucky made the observation to Pope. The judge further explained that had Charles been convicted indictably, then the maximum sentence would have been five years. Pope complained about severity of sentence. Noting that Charles had pleaded guilty and that this was his first conviction, Pope wanted a lighter sentence. But  Justice  Lucky remonstrated: “For a sub-machine gun and 70 rounds of ammunition! You are talking about a gun that is capable of rapid  fire.”

Justice Lucky (President), sitting together with Justice Stanley John, reminded Pope that earlier in the week Chief Justice Sat  Sharma had expressed concern about the prevalence of gun related offences and called on magistrates not to hesitate to jail first offenders. Senior State prosecutor Trevor Ward agreed with the Court that the magistrate had exceeded her jurisdiction in sentencing. The Court then dismissed the appeal but varied the sentence to the correct prison term of two years  and ordered that it start from Friday. The facts of the case are that on August 25, 2002, at about 3.30 pm, PC Shawn Hoyte and other policemen were on mobile patrol when they stopped a vehicle Charles was in. Hoyte told Charles that he had information that he was in possession of arms and ammunition, but Charles denied the accusation.  On searching Charles, the police found a sub-machine gun and 70 rounds of ammunition. Charles was taken to the Morvant Police Station and charged. He pleaded guilty on August 28, 2002 and was sentenced.

Vice-President of Suriname Airways, Clyde Cairo, yesterday criticised BWIA’s lack of co-operation as one of the reasons for the economic problems of the airline. He stated that BWIA needed to co-operate with other airline carriers in order to survive. Cairo was at the time commenting at a press conference held at the Hilton Trinidad.

Cairo added that though Suriname Airways tried to hold discussions with BWIA’s CEO Conrad Aleong concerning an agreement between the two airlines for flight operations to and from Suriname and Trinidad, they were unsuccessful. He said that the number of people travelling between the two countries were too low to require flights from both airlines each week. Suriname Airways offers flights twice a week to and from both countries whereas BWIA, which started flying to Suriname last year, offers flights three times a week. Cairo stated that the number of flights offered far outnumbered the quota of people flying. He said, “BWIA is not a carrier that likes to co-operate. They just want to take over.” He continued that since BWIA is not doing well as an airline it should co-operate with other airlines in the region. Cairo also spoke on the possible commercial and economic benefits of trade and tourism between the two countries. He said the purpose of his visit and other Surinamese delegates to Trinidad and Tobago was to strengthen the ties between the two countries.

President of Suriname’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Robert Ameerali, said that Suriname hopes in the near future to export products to Trinidad and Tobago. He added that Suriname planned to use Trinidad and Tobago as the base from which to export their products to the rest of CARICOM and Europe. Rahid Doekhie, secretary for the Suriname Manufacturers Association, said their main goal was to replace imports to Trinidad and Tobago from the USA with products from Suriname. He said Suriname produces a high quality of diversified products which they wish to export to all of CARICOM. Jerome Khan, representative for Suriname Airways in Trinidad and Tobago, stated that Suriname had a lot to offer to the local businessman. He said the Surinamese Government recently signed a trade agreement with the Brazilian state of Para. This allows for any goods manufactured in Suriname to be granted duty-free access in Para. He said Trinidad and Tobago’s businessmen could also take advantage of the agreement providing that their goods are manufactured in Suriname.

HE was a garbage man and sometimes when he was hungry and had no money, Vishnu Rampersad sold bottles. Today he has $.5 million.

The money is compensation granted to Rampersad in the High Court on Tuesday, arising out of an accident in 1999. He worked on a garbage truck and was knocked down by a car. At the time, he was picking up bottles along the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway. Bottle selling is Rampersad’s part-time job. Rampersad plans to use the money by caring for his children and buying medication for himself. December 29, 1999 was just another day for Rampersad, collecting bottles along the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, until a speeding car knocked him unconscious. The accident left him semi-paralysed on one side of his body. He is a father of two teenaged children and when Sunday Newsday spoke to Rampersad on Tuesday, hours after a High Court judge granted him the award, Rampersad was sitting all alone in his one-room house at Arch Street Extension, Vistabella. “I call it a twist of fate,” Rampersad, his speech sometimes slurred due to the head injuries, said. He comes from a humble family of five, both parents having died many years ago. Rampersad has been separated from his wife, Linda, for the past 12 years. His children, Amanda, 16, and Aaron, 15, live with their mother.

A garbage man he has been for most of his life, employed with Waste Disposal Ltd. Rampersad told Sunday Newsday that his life had been shattered by his estranged relationship with his wife and family. “I knocked from pillar to post,” he added, “living everywhere.” Life became miserable, he said, without his family. Rampersad said that he took to the “bottle” to drown his worries. He began living on his own in a one-bedroom shack on the outskirts of San Fernando. He earned $60 a day working on a garbage truck. Rampersad cooked for himself and washed his own clothes. Everyday he returned home from his job, all dirty and bitten by flies and ants. He said he welcomed the tiredness, because it made him fall fast asleep. Rampersad said he hated having to wake up the next morning to return to the garbage dump. It was a salary, Rampersad said, on which he barely made ends meet. Out of the weekly $300, Rampersad had to support his children. He faltered on several occasions and wife Linda took him to court for arrears of maintenance. Rampersad said he supplemented his income selling the bottles he usually plucked from overturned dustbins on the roadside. On three occasions, Rampersad said, he was summoned to the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court for arrears of maintenance payments to the children. Twice he was arrested by police at his shack and taken to jail when he didn’t pay the arrears. On July 16, Rampersad has another maintenance case in court. He recalls being knocked down and spending several days after at the San Fernando General Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. He suffered a head injury, a broken left arm and Rampersad now walks with the aid of a stick. Attorney Shawn Roopnarine took up his plight and sued the driver of the vehicle and insurance company — B and L Insurance, claiming damages and compensation. On Tuesday, Master of the High Court, Patricia Sobion, handed down her judgment in favour of Rampersad.

The insurance company, she ordered, is to pay him $250,000 in general damages at the rate of 12 percent per annum from the date of the filing of the writ — 2000. For loss of earnings, Rampersad was ordered to be paid $150,000. Master Sobion awarded him special damages of $44,310 with interest at the rate of six percent from 1999. Since the accident rendered him unable to work, she further ordered he be paid for future loss of earnings in the sum of $116,418. The total sum — $500,000. When Sunday Newsday visited Rampersad on Tuesday, he was sitting on his bed in the centre of his one-room house. The room, unkept with clothing strewn everywhere, is suffocating. He stays in bed all day, he said, because of the injury and partly due to the fact that he has no furniture. There are neighbours around, but they pay little attention to Rampersad who hardly ever ventures outside. He said he lives on bread, for he can hardly walk to the shop. “I buy bread from the van; I try to cook with a stove a friend give me, but the food doh come out good,” Rampersad murmured. One of his neighbours, Zaimoon and her husband Frankie Sookdeo are very kind to him, he said. Zaimoon told Sunday Newsday: “Yes, we give him food often, but it’s not something we want to boast about.” Rampersad last saw his children a month ago. Day after day, he longs to spend more time with them. Asked what he would do with the $.5 million, Rampersad said: “I will put it in the bank. But then I have to maintain my children.” He must take certain medication everyday, he said, the cost of which he projects, could absorb a substantial part of the monetary compensation.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: Reaching for a pungent potion of solvent, wood sealer and perfume, Olga Santiago Ocana advises how to ward off bad spirits during a hurricane season that forecasters warn could be busier than ever.

In a shop packed with bundles of herbs, candles, beads and other paraphernalia of Santeria, the Afro-Caribbean religion, Santiago tells a client to sprinkle the anti-hurricane elixir around the home. “Every time there’s a hurricane, people rush to buy this,” she says in her “botanica,” a shop where people buy charms and potions. If forecasters are right, she may be busier than ever. Due to warmer sea-surface temperatures, forecasters from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict between six and nine hurricanes this Atlantic hurricane season, which begins today and runs through November 30. Last year, forecasters predicted at least six hurricanes. There were four, with one hitting the US coastline and two lashing the Caribbean. “This year, the increased activity foreseen in the Atlantic basin should increase the probability (by) 30 percent of US and Caribbean landfall,” said Phil Klotzbach, a forecaster at Colorado State University.

The uncertainty hurricane season brings each year has helped shape the Caribbean’s culture. The word “hurricane” comes from the Taino and Arawak Indian belief that the mighty storms were the manifestation of the god Jurakan. Hurakan also was the ancient Mayan god of wind and storm. The belief that supernatural beings were responsible for the storms continued long after the Tainos were exterminated by wars and diseases brought by European conquerors. During the 16th century, as Catholicism spread through the Caribbean, a special prayer begged God to “spare houses from the evil spirits and the malignant storms and winds.” The Vatican removed the prayer when it modernised the Roman Catholic liturgy in 1965, said Edwin Miner Sola, author of “History of the Hurricanes in Puerto Rico.” Around the same time, US meteorologists started giving storms female names in alphabetical order, a practice amended years later to include men’s names.

In earlier centuries, hurricanes had been named for the saint’s day on which they struck. Spanish —speaking islands continued naming the storms after saints until 1960, leading to some storms having two names, according to Miner Sola’s book. Hurricane Betsy in 1956 was called Santa Clara in Puerto Rico, while islanders dubbed Donna, the hurricane that hit in 1960, San Lorenzo. Some say the storms have shaped the Caribbean psyche over generations. In Cuba, hurricanes have helped produce “a sense of instability and unpredictability of life, a philosophy of life, a high tolerance for enduring catastrophes,” said Louis Perez, who teaches Cuban history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cuba gets hit more than other islands, mostly because it is the largest in the region. Caribbean islands were battered by a series of deadly hurricanes between 1995 and 2001 but have seen relatively few since. Cuba suffered heavy damage from Isidore and Lily last year, and in 2001 it endured even heavier losses from Michelle, which killed five people on the island and 12 others elsewhere in the region. One of the deadliest hurricanes was Flora, in 1963, which killed more than 7,000 people — mostly in Haiti and Cuba. Hurricane San Ciriaco killed more than 3,000 people in Puerto Rico in 1899.

The prelude to a hurricane is an eerie silence as the sky turns black. Then comes the shrieking maelstrom of wind and rain, sowing terror with banshee-like wails. Some storms can batter an island for 12 hours or more. They tear off roofs, uproot trees, topple utility poles, flood homes and businesses, rip the pavement from roads and block them with debris such as a refrigerator, a TV cable dish, lawn furniture, someone’s precious photos. In a city like San Juan, population one million, high-rise sea-front condominums sway when winds top 100 mph (160 kph), and highways become raging rivers with cars swept along like boats. Boat owners rush to secure their craft in “hurricane holes,” but even these are not safe in a severe storm that will tear vessels from their anchors and bash them into firewood. Hurricanes wreak havoc on the ecology, stripping white sand from beaches, destroying eggs of endangered species such as leatherback turtles, leaving trees denuded and smashing fragile coral reefs. For weeks after, islanders suffer with no electricity, no running water and a scarcity of fresh food as supermarkets throw out spoiled supplies.

Economically this tourist-dependent area can pay the cost for years. Some hotels never have been rebuilt since damage from hurricanes in 1995 and 1996. Some insurance companies have refused to do business in hurricane-prone areas, while others increased rates by 100 percent and more. Hurricanes also work their way into the region’s art. Puerto Rican writer Luis Pales Matos, in his poem “The Hurricane,” compared the powerful storms to a musician drawing open a “fierce accordion of winds.” The Puerto Rican folk song “Temporal” tells a coming storm to turn away, rather like the nursery rhyme ordering the rain away. Jimmy Buffet sings of his need for a Bloody Mary in “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season.” A bottle of rum is more in order in the Caribbean, where many islanders hold hurricane fetes, inviting friends over and partying away the hours they’re forced to spend enclosed in boarded up homes. For centuries, hurricanes caught people off-guard. But technology has helped demystify the storms. Now, forecasters can give warnings days ahead of time, allowing people to escape danger, protect property and lay in supplies against shop closures and utility outages. “I listen to the radio and I watch television for the weather forecast,” said Johnny Correa, who lost a house to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. “I also keep water and food supplies.” Among those supplies, for the minority of Puerto Ricans who adhere to Santeria, are anti-hurricane potions and offerings for personal saints. “People rush to buy these candles and soap just like they buy sheets of plywood and nails,” said the Santeria shop owner Santiago. “You have to believe in it.”

As of next week Suriname Airways will be offering packages to Carifesta VIII at reduced prices for airfare and hotel accommodation. Representative for Sur-iname Airways in Trinidad and Tobago Jerome Khan made the disclosure at a press conference held at the Trinidad Hilton yesterday.

Carifesta will be held in Suriname from August 25-30. The theme for this year’s event is “Cultural Diversity.” Countries the world-over will be participating including members of Caricom, ACS countries, Holland, China, India and Indonesia. Khan said that the packages were offered to promote interest in the festival and offer tourists the opportunity to become involved not only in Carifesta but also in Suriname. One of the main highlights of the event is the exhibition of the cultures of the native Amerindians and Maroons who still reside in Suriname today. Another attraction will be the Grand Market.