The four, two men and their wives were arrested last week at their homes following intense investigations by San Fernando CID officers. They are all set to appear before a San Fernando magistrate today charged with sacrilege.

According to the Larceny Act of Trinidad and Tobago, Chapter 11 : 12, Any person who (a) breaks and enters any place of divine worship and commits any arrestable offence therein; or (b) breaks out of any place of divine worship, having committed any arrestable offence therein, is guilty of sacrilege and liable to imprisonment of up to ten years.

According to police reports the four – a 23-year-old mechanic and his 20-year- wife and a 27-yearold man and his 23-year-old wife broke into the Divine Life Society Shiv Temple located at 107 Picton Settlement, Diamond Village sometime between June 15 and June 21 and stole five speaker boxes, five tripods, two fans and over 3,000 in cash. The doors to the temple were also damaged by the intruders.

President of the Temple Frank Deonarine, 70, said he assisted police in recovering the five speaker boxes along with the tripods and fans.

He said three of the speaker boxes, each valued $5, 000, were sold for $1500 to someone in Caparo.

Deonarine said he led police to another a house in Quinam in Siparia where another speaker box was recovered. He said cash from the donation boxes was not recovered.

Deonarine, a father of eight said he tries his best to uplift his community and was saddened that people would even consider going into a place of worship to steal.

Charges were laid by PC Andre of the San Fernando CID. Detective Cpl Khan and PC Rampersad of the San Fernando CID assisted in investigations.

The investigation comes as part of more stringent auditing regulations to clamp down on financial mismanagement with the Force.

The release stated that the police have been notified.

“The TTDF commends its internal auditors on the work undertaken in this matter to date and reconfirms its commitment to driving the continued improvement of the organisation whilst being ever mindful of the need for care and caution in due process,” the release stated.

On Saturday, former Minister of National Security Gary Griffith issued a statement in which he accused law enforcement agencies of carrying out borderline extortion against the promoters of certain sporting events by requesting unnecessary manpower (which must be paid for) for these events.

Shortly after the issuance of the release yesterday, military sources revealed that a low-ranking officer within the Regiment had confessed to stealing approximately $2M. The officer who along with another and a civilian employee were implicated in the theft.

The missing funds were brought to the attention of the Defence Force after a replacement for the civilian employee, who is believed to be on sickleave, discovered discreprencies in invoices at the accounting department.

According to military sources, the officer reportedly said that he stole the money after he allegedly saw others stealing and thought that he could get away with it as well.

The Tridents lost one of the world’s best T20 players in South African AB de Villiers this season, while his countryman Robin Peterson, will also not line up for the Tridents this year. Pollard believes the signing of Williamson and Riaz can help the Tridents push for their second CPL title.

“In place of them we have our marque player in Kane Williamson, the New Zealand captain, and we have the fast bowler Wahab Riaz,” Pollard said.

“We all see what Kane does on the international scene, he is a world class player and leader of the New Zealand team. Wahab Riaz demolished us (West Indies) here in the Caribbean a couple months ago, so we have added that firepower to our team.” The Tridents captain is also glad to have the ex-Barbados and West Indies aggressive duo of opener Dwayne Smith and fast bowler Tino Best in the squad.

The Tridents, winners of the 2014 edition, finished fifth among the six teams after the preliminary round in 2016 and failed to advance to the second phase of the tournament. Pollard said his team is aiming to make amends.

“I am looking forward to it.

The Barbados Tridents did not do well last year, the first year out of the four years we did not qualify for the second round. Obviously we are looking to put that right. Firstly trying to get into the top four, see how the tournament goes and try to go all the way.” Pollard said he has been staying fit in Trinidad recently, while his teammates have started a camp in Barbados. “I have been doing some physical training while I’ve been home, and camp has started in Barbados. I am doing my physical work in between and I played in the (Powerade) Central T20 tournament recently to get some batting practice.”

The parade is part of the ALIAS Entertainment Expo (AEX) convention this year, entitled The Apocalypse. The three part event started last Friday and ran until yesterdayat the Centre of Excellence, Macoya where doors opened at 9 am.

Speaking at the seminar, Director of AEX, Josette James, said, “Cosplay is a mixture of the words ‘costume’ and ‘play’ and it’s basically dressing up as your favourite character. The convention is getting bigger every year and all our tickets were sold out.” Present at the seminar was international cosplayer Yaya Han, who said she was “so happy” to be at the seminar.

She added that it is her first time in Trinidad and Tobago and that she “can’t wait” to partake in the convention. Richard Hayworth, voice actor for the anime character Kenshin Himura from Japanese manga series Samurai X, said he was “very excited” to be a part of the convention and that he was “looking forward to meeting people and answering their questions.” Trinidad and Tobago’s first cosplayer, Natalia Henry, said the art of Cosplay has “grown a lot” in the country. “When I started doing it, everybody was looking at me like the crazy girl that I was. I faced the world of ridicule,” Henry said. She added that Cosplay has been in the country for the past 17 years and said she had her start in the practice when she decided to dress up as Kenshin Himura at anime convention Anime City.

The new “massa” is your trade union leader.

Massa says come out in your numbers and protest the Government’s inability to meet with demands for back pay and/or increased salaries.

The larger the size of the demonstration the better to impress.

What is at stake is the image of the unions.

Image is everything in TT . Realistically, they know there is insufficient funds but the grandstanding must take place, come hell or g water, if only to browbeat us all into believing that they retain their potency like when oil was US$100 a barrel.

Many descendants of slavery form the mainly African base of the ruling People’s National Movement. How pathetic is it that within a few days of celebrating emancipation that the emancipated will demonstrate with the intent of embarrassing their very own government into submission? History has informed us that the enslaved were sold by their enemies as a form of punishment.

With friends like the trade union masters, who needs enemies?

LYNETTE JOSEPH Diego Martin

The QSS covers areas which are very important to customers of the Electricity Commission and prescribes such things as how long it should take to resolve complaints; how long the commission should take to respond to complaints about street lighting and the length of time it should take to restore electricity after an unplanned outage.

In a statement, the RIC says it uses a consultative approach in developing the QSS and is now inviting its stakeholders to comment on the draft standards before they are finalised and published.

Comments must reach the RIC by September 8, 2017. The draft standards document can be downloaded from the RIC’s website at: www.ric.org.tt/consultations/.

Interested persons may also get a printed copy from the RIC’s offices at 1st & 3 rd Floors, Furness House, corner Wrightson Road and Independence Square, Port of Spain.

The RIC is the regulator for the Electricity Transmission and Distribution Sector in Trinidad and Tobago and for T&TEC, the sole utility operating within the sector.

Part of that responsibility is the prescription and publication of the QSS.

The statement says that the QSS Scheme was first established in 2004 to ensure that T&TEC provides and maintains an acceptable level of service to its customers.

It was revised in 2008, and is being revised again to cater to the current needs of customers.

The warning came from Snr Supt Joanne Archie who applauded a suggestion from a resident speaking at a police town meeting at the Glen Road Community Centre last week, that landlords should seek information from police.

“There are a lot of people coming from Trinidad to Tobago to hideaway and are on outstanding warrants, people who are committing robberies and as soon as they come to rent your place and they settle they start to do criminal activities.

You need to ask for an ID and ask a police officer to do a background check. We are willing to do that check for you before you rent anybody your place,” Archie told residents.

The suggestion that persons renting apartments should visit the police station to get a background check on prospective tenants came from Annette Broucher, who said that landlords needs such information so they would know whether that person has a criminal record or was suspected of any felony.

Residents also spoke about larceny, delinquency, parking restrictions and towing of vehicles as well as lack of street lighting as issues affecting them.

Michael Collins of Rockly Vale complained about young persons who he said were a nuisance to the community, that they were walking around the community with cutlasses on their hips making threats.

Collins claimed some of these men were from Trinidad and warned that residents could take the law into their own hands if the police do nothing. In response, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Tobago Division, Garfield Moore, gave the assurance that officers would address with the issues, urging residents to not take the law into their own hands.

Another villager, April Huey, said she would like to see more activities available for young people, especially during the vacation periods while another person, Miss Eastman, said she hopes the police would deal with family conflicts in a more serious way.

Eastman said she lodged a complaint with the police about her son who was causing trouble at home.

For the year, eight murders have been committed in Tobago with the most recent being a murder/suicide in which Romelda Joseph-King was chopped to death in bushes at Congo Hill in Moriah last Wednesday by her husband Hilton Gordon King shortly after she gave him divorce letters.

King then killed himself by ingesting a toxic substance.

Speaking at a service to commemorate Emancipation Day at the Holy Trinity Church in Portof- Spain, Dr Douglas said, “We have a legacy of slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism, and all of these ideas and things have not left within the minds of Trinidadians. A philosophy of dependency, of begging, of waiting of anticipating of hoping and not taking the initiative to transform their lives or to make a major change.” He continued, “That is one of the things our leaders have not properly addressed or have not addressed the culture of the people. How long are we going to depend on oil or gas? Those are finite commodities. What we have to do is build-up our people, have a creative education system that teaches our people to make things or products, how to live and create a place that is really meaningful.” Douglas told the congregation that leadership is not what you can do for yourself or what you can get for yourself, but to move in the progression of freedom which goes from salary to independence to inter-dependence.

“Inter-dependence is when we reach the place beyond independence that says we all need each other. We need to work with each other in order for all of us to be totally free and that is not a value that have inculcated that we have bread in the whole of society.” Douglas said leaders have to demonstrate to the people that they have to go beyond just fighting for money, wealth and fame. He said leaders have to build a society that deals with respect, recognising each other, acceptance and learning.

“Being able to learn and grow with help our people so that we could produce creative things that we can sell to the rest of the world. These are the kind of things that we have not been thought so people are resorting to a kind of scramble to the end. That is a nature of an enslaved society…

each man for himself, and who can kiss up to the master to get the best for himself.” Douglas said freedom is a choice, but as individuals, people have to make a choice to be free.

“It is not a given, but it is a choice. Even after the slaves were set free, a lot of them remained on the plantation and they did not know what to do as to how to liberate their lives. The process of educating yourself I and also becoming skilful is a process to live in community, that is how you empower yourself to live in a free world.”

Several issues need to be addressed. Crime, education, health, public utilities, infrastructure and the Judiciary are but a few of the challenging areas of daily life in TT.

Surely the government must be at its wits’ end trying to sort these problems, and inherent in these efforts lies one of the major defects of governance in this country — immediacy and the inability to look ahead.

Far too often decisions are taken in an attempt to solve problems immediately — short-term measures, which only result in greater problems down the road. It appears we are digging holes to fill holes or we lack that vital trait of foresight — the ability to predict what will happen or be needed in the future.

Foresight today is no longer a gift that is endowed to psychics or rely on a crystal ball, but scientific approaches to problem-solving, such as contingency planning, risk management, monitoring and evaluation. These are tools employed when dealing with projects and programmes to ensure that chances of failure or of not meeting specific objectives are minimised. These are much more critical when mega-projects or programmes geared towards impacting the well-being of a society are involved.

So I am forced to conclude that we are short on foresight in this country as too many major decisions are being taken with little or no apparent consideration of what will happen or will be needed in the future.

Examples include the decisions taken by the JLSC without apparent consideration of the results of the appointment of Marcia Ayers-Caesar as a judge; the major adjustments to GATE without considering the impact this will have on the quality of tertiary education, its accessibility, or its social impact; the construction of the highway to Point Fortin without consideration of the effects on the environment and the people of the communities in proximity, and the Clico bailout and its current resulting issues. We can even go back to Section 34 and LifeSport — and list goes on.

These are but a few instances where we see the results of short-sightedness in planning and major decision-taking.

Whereas we know that one cannot predict the future, I dare say that careful consideration of the facts and weighing short-term gains against long-term complications must be factors of the planning processes, particularly when scarce public resources are involved.

Far too often we attempt to fix things in TT in hindsight, ending up with exorbitant expenditure on commissions of enquiry and legal fees to recover monies from failed contracts, projects and programmes.

Given our present dire economic circumstances, we are not in a position to sustain the considerable losses in taxpayers’ money as would have occurred in the past. Prudent management of our resources is not an option, but a prerequisite to our sustainable development.

The question is to what extent we employ these foresight measures to improve our decision-making and assure a restless nation that our future is in good hands?

GARVIN COLE Tobago

Archer expressed her sorrow via a ‘live’ video feed on her Facebook account in which she called on youths to lay down their weapons.

“I will pray and ask God to forgive the person who pulled the trigger and killed my child.

“My son was going through a lot. He was searching for God.

Last year I had to bury another of my sons and here I have to come once again and bury another. I was in church sitting down when I got a text message saying they kill my child,” Archer said.

Archer also directed her emotions at her son’s murderer and urged the perpetrator to seek forgiveness from God.

“I wish this video could go viral all over so that Mr Gunman can see it.

“Go to God and ask God for peace because you all don’t understand.” According to reports, Harrichand of Carenage was last seen sitting at the corner of St Paul Street and Block 8 in East Port of Spain sometime before 1 am yesterday.

Residents reported hearing loud explosions and later notified the police.

Officers of the Inter Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Homicide Investigations Bureau (Region I), responded and discovered Harrichand’s bullet-riddled body face down on the ground.

He was rushed to Port of Spain General Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Investigators have yet to establish a motive for the killing.

Newsday spoke to relatives who said that in the days leading up to his death, Harrichand said he kept feeling as if his days were numbered. No relative could say why anyone would want Harrichand dead.

However, sources within the community claim that Harrichand ran afoul of the ‘Rasta City’ gang and was executed. Up to press time, no arrest was made.

In an unrelated incident, a Diego Martin man was shot and wounded in Farm Road, Diego Martin.

According to sources, Wallace Quashie, 26, was liming with friends at about 11 pm when they where approached by a gunman who shot Quashie. Residents notified the West End police and officers responded.

Quashie was first taken to the St James Hospital but was later transferred to the General Hospital where he remains warded in critical condition.