N Touch

Jack starts Marvin Lee Trust with $10,000

BEGINNING next year, a Marvin Lee Memorial match will be added to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation’s calendar.

Lee, who suffered a crippling injury during a 2001 CONCACAF under-20 qualifying match at the Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence, whose field has been re-named the Marvin Lee Stadium, died on March 9 this year. The TTFF agreed to this on request of special adviser Jack Warner. And the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) will donate a trophy for this match, and will also participate in the inaugural match. The federation’s executive also accepted a Warner proposal for the establishment of a Marvin Lee Trust Fund. This fund will be set up to help players injured while representing Trinidad and Tobago at all levels.

Warner has also come forward with the first contribution to the Marvin Lee Trust Fund by donating $10,000 and it was proposed that two and a half percent from gross gate receipts from all matches played under the auspicies of the TTFF be added to the fund. A board comprising prominent citizens is soon to be established to administer the fund. The TTFF also agreed to retire Marvin Lee’s No 17 jersey, which will not be worn  by any other player in the future. The Football Federation  accepted an invitation from the CEO of South Africa Bid 2010, Mr Danny Jordaan, to make a reciprocal visit to that country in June and play one match against their national Team. Other matches against Botswana and Ghana are also being planned.

Suspended Soca Warriors ‘freed’

THE 19 suspended players who went on strike prior to an international friendly against Finland a month ago have been given a reprieve.

After much deliberation at a meeting on Sunday, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation’s Executive Committee unanimously decided that the investigative commmittee’s job was incomplete. The executive deemed the committee’s report inconclusive and found the investigation did not go far enough since all players were not individually interviewed. They also found national team manager George Joseph, who was present at all meetings of the investigators, was never interviewed, neither was technical director Hannibal Najjar, nor several others considered to be relevant to the investigation. As a result, the TTFF have advised Najjar and Joseph that they are free to call up the 19. But Najjar said he could not call any of the suspended players for the forthcoming Gold Cup qualifiers since they had not trained for some time. Meanwhile, terms and conditions of service for players called to the national squads were discussed and approved but were not disclosed.

De Verteuil snares 81-lb wahoo

RICHARD DE VERTEUIL snared the heaviest wahoo at the Trinidad and Tobago Game Fishing Association-organised RBTT Bank Wahoo Tournament.

He will collect the $1,600 prize cheque for the feat. Moon Shadow, the craft from which De Verteuil cast his lines, took the Best Boat (wahoo only) prize of $2,000 at the tournament which was contested last weekend. De Verteuil hooked a wahoo which tipped the scales at 81 pounds 10 ounces, to best Richard Lazzari’s catch of 67 pounds eight ounces which earned him the $1,300 runner-up prize. Ryan Edghill, with his 65 pounds 10 ounces catch got the $1,100 third prize.

Marilyn Sheppard, who hooked an 18 pound wahoo got the $600 best woman angler prize; while Kevin McLean who snared an 58 pound 10 ounces wahoo was the top junior angler and will collect $600. Junior angler runner-up Michael De Freitas with a 39 pound 12 ounces catch collected $400. Apart from Moon Shadow, Sid Johnson in Barbie Doll got the runner-up Best Boat prize of $1,700; while Robert McLean in Tequila, which was third, collects $1,300. The heaviest dolphin, weighing 19 pounds 12 ounces, was caught by angler Gary McLean, while Gerry Johnston, with his 22 pound eight ounce catch, took the heaviest kingfish prize. Anglers will share over $45,000 in prize money at a presentation ceremony at the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club today from 7.30 pm.

Welcome, Mr President

WE JOIN with the rest of the country in welcoming President Max Richards who was ceremoniously installed into office on Monday. We are particularly pleased because his accession may be seen as formally concluding a long period of political uncertainty and turmoil which not only precluded the election of a new Head of State but also exacerbated the divisiveness to which, unfortunately, our society is prone. It was the destiny of his predecessor Arthur NR Robinson to preside over the critical and unprecedented times that followed the 18-18 electoral tie of December 2001 and to remain in office beyond his allotted time. Now with an elected government and new President in office, the country can return to the stability and progress it once enjoyed and, hopefully, to the task of building a united and socially harmonious nation.

It is pleasing to note that, in his inaugural speech, President Richards acknowledges the challenge our country faces. “No one who is alive and thinking at this time,” he says, “can be sanguine about our unity and about our vision of ourselves. There are in this country people of every religion, people of every race and colour — black, brown, white, yellow — and people like myself who find it hard to separate out the different entities that have been blended in their formation.” It says much about President Richards and his understanding of the role he must play in our current circumstances when he declares: “I give assurance and serve warning that I will allow nothing and no one to prevent me from bringing to the tasks before us qualities of independence, even-handedness, impartiality, objectivity, fairness and consideration for all.” His assurance and his warning, his resolve “to serve the whole nation without fear and without favour” are addressed to the society as a whole but President Richards, it seems to us, is also answering all those persons who may have doubts about his individuality and his non-partisanship, those who had sought to embroil him in the controversies of the recent past by attempting to link him personally and actively with a political party.

Hopefully, with this assurance, we can consign that episode to our forgettable history and now look forward to a new era. Our growing maturity as a nation would demand that every citizen, regardless of his creed or political affiliation, should consider the President as his own and pay him the respect, regard and consideration his office deserves. We note with considerable satisfaction the observation of Mr Richards that the first person to congratulate him after the results were declared was the Opposition candidate in the Electoral College exercise. “I consider the generosity, graciousness and good wishes of Mr Ganace Ramdial to be a signal to our people that although there was a contested election, consensus after the decision is a desired and possible goal,” the President noted.

It is a positive sign, also, that several members of the opposition party attended Monday’s swearing-in ceremony and offered the President their congratulations at the reception which followed at President’s House. In recounting the personal style of his three predecessors in office, Mr Richards may be making the point that he also would be bringing his own personality and his own concerns to the demands of this high office. With his life-long career in higher education, no  less could be expected of him. The country, we believe, could also be assured that our new President, while being a Trini to the bone, would grace the office of Head of State and symbolic leader of our nation with the poise and dignity it requires.

Keep Caroni’s rum stocks in TT hands


“We never know the worth of
water till the well is dry.”
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 5451.


Preference for the sale of Caroni (1975) Limited’s highly valuable rum stocks should be given to a local investor rather than to foreign capital.

A bid for the rum stocks by a foreign investor, even though it may be higher, and at best marginally higher, than that made by a local investor, would in the medium and long term, be far less beneficial to Trinidad and Tobago than acceptance of a local bid. The reasons are clear. The earnings derived by a domestic company [or investor] are likely to be retained in Trinidad and Tobago to further develop the country, and in the process create more jobs and contribute additional revenues to the Treasury.

Let us assume that the foreign company or investor should bottle the rum here and sell it both on the local market and internationally, then it will follow as the night the day that the net earnings made from the rum stocks will be exported to the country, where the company/investor is based, whether it be the United Kingdom, the QUnited States of America or Timbuctoo. In turn, there is the likelihood that the foreign owner would bulk ship the Caroni rum stocks to a plant overseas to be bottled and labelled, and rum in excess of his home market demand would be re-exported. All of the profits, save for those made by overseas distributors, would remain in the country, where the rum is bottled.

Let us say, for example, that the investor operates out of the United Kingdom, then the British Treasury would earn not only additional corporation taxes, along with additional Value Added Tax and Customs and Excise duties, but increased Personal Income Tax gained from salaries and/or wages flowing from added employment. The converse would hold good for this country. Trinidad and Tobago would lose from a drop in corporation and personal income taxes, as well as Customs and Excise duties and Value Added Tax. There would be a fall off in employment and employment opportunities at the existing Rum Division of Caroni (1975) Limited. And while, there would be an increased turnaround of money within the British economy, there would be a falloff in Trinidad and Tobago’s.

In addition, whether there is an export of profits from Trinidad and Tobago or the profits are wholly earned in the United Kingdom  this would represent a loss of needed foreign exchange. I maintain that it would be false economic thinking to give undue weight to a few million dollars [or pounds] more offered by a foreign company/investor for Caroni’s rum stocks, while ignoring the clear monetary benefits that can be gained by having the stocks in local hands and developed by local capital.

Should Government go the way of preferential consideration to domestic bidders, then a Trinidad and Tobago company, either with a policy of, or intent on developing a policy of shifting “away from the commodity market to the export of products” would, even as it seeks to optimise earnings for itself, optimise earnings and revenues for the country. All of this would be in the context of the need to develop strategies for dealing, effectively, with World Trade Organisation regulations, with specific reference to the preferential entry quota of sugar to the European Union within the framework of the Convention of Lome. And in much the same way that there is a need to shift from simply the production of raw sugar, [as beneficial as the Lome Convention may appear to be, and incidentally it is not] to that of white or refined sugar, there is also the need to shift from bulk export of rum to branded, bottled rum.

If I may be allowed to stray a bit. The Caribbean’s exports of sugar to the United Kingdom, first under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, and then when the UK joined the then European Economic Community, was limited to raw sugar. This raw sugar was later refined in the UK, in keeping with the old Imperialist policy that the colonies and/or Third World territories, should be kept as providers at the bottom end of the economic chain for the benefit of the exploitative Imperialists. Today, the European Union (of which the UK is a member) exports some 5,000,000 tonnes of refined sugar annually!

Trinidad and Tobago, along with the rest of CARICOM, is engaged largely in the bulk selling of rum to the UK, where it is either bottled, or used to blend other rums and/or alcoholic beverages and then placed on the product market. The point I make here is this, and it was a point made by Peter Salvary, Executive Director and Corporate Secretary of C L Financial, some time ago, is the need to concentrate on products. This is where the real money lies and clearly not in bulk selling. Trinidad and Tobago produces some of the world’s finest rums, several of which have won international awards. For example, Caroni (1975) Limited’s Legend 14 Year Old, its Special Old Cask Rum, its Felicite Gold, White Magic and Stallion Puncheon Rum have all won international awards. Other prize winning Trinidad and Tobago rums in annual Rumfest competitions, in which more than 160 of the world’s best rums have been judged, have included Angostura’s Old Oak White and Fernandes Distillers Vat 19.

If I have emphasised the export of rum products, as opposed to the bulk selling of rum, it is because Trinidad and Tobago is facing, as are other ACP signatories to the Convention of Lome, the end of Lome’s preferential entry of sugar by 2006. And the need to move away from raw sugar production and encourage a greater shift to rum products, while at the same time optimising economic returns, is urgent. We need to further develop and market our rums. Already, there is at least one CARICOM rum producer fetching as much as TT$800 per bottle of rum in niche markets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The niche markets are there to explore and develop, and it would be shortsighted to sell Caroni (1975) Limited’s rum stocks to foreign investors, when selling the stocks to a Trinidad and Tobago investor will ensure that the nation benefits.

The makings of a true Trini to the bone

THE EDITOR: Ten ways to know if you are a “true Trini to the bone.” What if there was some kind of device that could measure just how much of a Trini to the bone you really were, wouldn’t you like to take it? (It does not involve any removal of body parts). Well I wonder how many people would make the grade (probably less than the number of people on Mars).

Here’s a trial test: 1) A true Trini to the bone would not call in sick at work and one hour later find himself armed with cooler and parasol in the Oval taking in a one day match. 2) A true Trini to the bone would not stay home picking his teeth on Election Day then one week later sit down in the rum shop cussing the government. 3) A true Trini to the bone would not take every open space on the beach or highway as a dustbin for flinging his cigarette butt or empty chicken and chips boxes. 4) A true Trini to the bone would not go to the US Embassy for a visa and come back spitting yankee. 5) A true Trini to the bone would promote the culture at every chance and be willing to display their cultural colours not only when it is Carnival. 6) A true Trini to the bone would not come to a show five minutes before starting time and shove and push himself to the front of a long line of people who were standing for hours. 7) A true Trini to the bone would not mimic every aspect of American culture that is shoved down their throat via cable. 8)  A true Trini to the bone would honour their national heroes and not park them aside for Puff Daddy, Ashanti etc. 9)  A true Trini to the bone would love country above all else. 10) A true Trini to the bone will always be a true Trini to the bone.

ALLYSON BLANDIN
Mt Lambert

No more gambling

THE EDITOR: Dear Honourable Prime Minister, Grace and peace be unto you. In your last term you introduced Lotto and legalised Whe Whe, which is now Play Whe.

These games, deliberately placed in supermarkets and pharmacies have ruined many family lives, even many God fearing ones. We have seen the result in the rising crime statistics over the eight year period since the introduction. The biggest beneficiary has been the foreign company who was granted the online gaming licence. Their assistance in the destruction of our Christian values is very foreign. They have been allowed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in this small country.

Now in your second term we understand you are about to allow this same company to widen their net and pull our children into their clutches by being allowed to bring online slot machines which will be placed in every community. The bright lights of these machines will attract our children and cause them to lose their futures. We urge you to follow true Christian values that you deliver no new gambling. We know you share our moral values. We pray that you really care. Yours in true love of God.

BISHOP DR CLAUDE ARTHUR
President Christian Council Against New Gambling (CCANG)
123 Henry Street
Port-of-Spain

Rocking baby to death

THE EDITOR: In the United States a nurse, named Gillian Stanek gave evidence before US Congress that in a hospital establishment where abortions are performed, as a more “humane” way of killing the child, the mother was given Cycotec or other medication which caused the uterus to open and the baby to fall out.

Gillian stated that many of these babies were still alive after this procedure, so they were taken to the room where the soiled linen was kept; the baby was left on a metal table to die. She herself had cradled some of these little ones until they died two to three hours later. When she wrote to the Medical Board she was asked to leave the hospital. She refused, as she believed she must try to save healthy babies from dying. She then appealed to Bishop George and further enquiries were made of the hospital. The hospital’s answer was what they were doing was legal.

The hospital now has a room, where the babies are taken to die. This room is equipped with a camera for parents to take a picture of their dying baby. Pink blankets for girls, and blue for boys. Parents can get a lock of the baby’s hair, or take a footprint of their baby. There are even certificates ready for those who want to baptise their babies. There is a large comfortable rocking chair where the mother can rock her baby to death. People of Trinidad wake up. If abortion is legalised in Trinidad and Tobago this may be us in the near future.

VIOLET D’ORNELLAS
Emmanuel Community

Decline in abortions due to education

THE EDITOR: The recent 45 percent decline in abortions in Russia had nothing to do with the legalising of murder (“abortion”) in that country, but with increased contraception.

It is therefore illogical and flawed to argue the case for legalising abortion based on activities not connected with the legislated slaughter of innocents. In fact, it was changes in education and attitude in nearby Poland that were responsible for the astonishing decline in abortions from 150,000 per annum in 1960 to 253 in 1998 … a drop of over 99 percent!! Attitudes, not legal access to the instruments of homicide. Actually, the incredibly sharp decline in abortions started before the 1993 law prohibited most abortions. They dropped steadily from 123,500 in 1987, to 59,500 in 1990, to 11,500 in 1992, 1,200 in 1993 (the year the law was changed), to 559 in 1995 and 253 in 1998.

It was forecast that the decline would lead to a surge in births, more illegal abortions posing as miscarriages, more maternal deaths, and increased infanticide and child murder. Polish social statistics showed no significant change in any of these; there was indeed a marked decline in hospitalisation after miscarriages and maternal deaths declined. Admissions for complications of pregnancy dropped from 178 to 144 per 10,000 women. Dr Pawel Woiciki, President of the Polish Federation of Pro-Life Movements, says the decline began with education of the reality of unborn life and abortions declined long before the 1993 law was enacted prohibiting most abortions. The other factor was the arrival of pro-life politicians publicly articulating a pro-life ethic.

Legislation restricting abortion was enacted in 1993. The law was reversed by the next government in 1996 and then reversed again by the Polish Constitutional Court back to what it was under the 1993 law. Sources: Demographic Situation in Poland, reports 1993 – 1998, Statistic Yearbook 1995 – 1998, GUS, Warsaw, Demographic Yearbook 1995 – 1998. In summary, the “Abortion lesson from Russia” by correspondent Jacquie Burgess is a botched attempt to promote legalised murder for Trinidad and Tobago.

ELDON G WARNER
Maraval

Encounter with two public servants

THE EDITOR: It is not often that a member of the public congratulates a civil servant for being dedicated to his work. However after the service I received, I wish to publicly thank one Mr Suresh Ramlal from the Registrar General office. His modus operandi was similar to that of a worker in the private sector.

He was well attired with his tie, very attentive, soft-spoken and fluent in his mannerism of speech. Above all he dealt with me professionally and speedily. About three weeks ago, he went out of his way to assist me in rectifying a problem on a birth certificate for one of my children. He located the birth book himself, after the vault attendant was incognito like Billy the kid, and some search clerks were behaving like morons. On that specific day, there were at least ten people of all ages and race waiting on him, and he dealt with all of them efficiently the same way he treated me.

This is in sharp contrast when I visited that same office on a previous occasion with a similar problem. I vividly remember being forced to tears by a temperamental female officer who was in charge at the time. Unlike Mr Ramlal, she seemed to be glued on to her seat with Evo-stic. This woman was very hostile and her general attitude and behaviour towards members of the public waiting to see her left much to be desired. She kept the public waiting for hours, apart from her hour and thirty minutes lunch break, and did not care if people travelled long distances from the country areas. I was even shocked to see her distastefully bawling up at her own staff in front of the public. The Public Service could certainly do without these types of recalcitrant and pompous lazy officers. Many of them are square pegs in round holes with their own agendas that run contrary to the functioning of an efficient and productive working environment. I sincerely hope the Minister of Public Administration, Lenny Saith can transform the service with more Ramlals.

AMELIA WALCOTT
Toco