The victim’s 67-year-old grandmother Marilyn Davis almost collapsed on seeing the body of her grandson Luke Rolle hanging from the tree at 12.15 pm. Minutes before, she saw her grandson screaming in delight as he swung on the rope. According to police, Rolle of No. 4 Circular Drive, Mt Pleasant Road in Claxton Bay was spending the long Easter weekend at the home of his grandmother.

He was supposed to return to his Claxton Bay home on Tuesday afternoon but instead when he was found, he was cut down and rushed to San Fernando General Hospital where Rolle died while receiving treatment. An autopsy was done yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.

Relatives said the schoolboy did not commit suicide but in a freak accident, his neck became entangled in the rope resulting in his death. They added that Rolle was a brilliant student and there were no domestic issues to warrant him taking his own life.

“This is a horrible tragedy which has befallen our family and we never expected this. We will like to let everyone know that Luke would never commit suicide,” said a cousin identified only as Vanessa. She said Rolle’s mother and grandmother were badly affected by his death.

Grandmother Davis said that a year ago, relatives tied the rope around a branch of a samaan tree at the back of her home and her grandson and his cousins used that rope to swing while playing.

She said that on Tuesday, Rolle and two cousins aged ten and were swinging from the rope when the cousins left Rolle to go to a nearby parlour to purchase snacks.

Davis said Rolle’s mother Elizabeth called asking that her son prepare himself to return home.

As she went to the back of the house to give Rolle the message, she found him hanging.

Davis said that her daughter Elizabeth was inconsolable as she is a very protective mother and was looking forward to her son’s return on Tuesday. At Davis’ house yesterday scores of relatives, teachers and friends of the schoolboy gathered to support the family.

Davis said her grandson’s ambition wanted to be a doctor and was extremely committed to his goal.

“You could call that child ten times and he would respond everytime, ‘yes grandma’, and carry out whatever task you assigned him.

“This is too much to bear, I don’t know how to cope with this and I don’t know why this had to happened to my grandson,” Davis said. “I just want to clear the air for all who have dirty thoughts, Luke did not commit suicide. He did not have any reason to, he was a sweet, obedient child.” The funeral for the Marabella North Secondary school student will take place tomorrow at the house of mourning. Police sources said yesterday that because the autopsy showed cause of death to be inconclusive, they will conduct an in-depth investigation, but at this time, no foul play is suspected.

Caroni Green Limited was created by the previous People’s Partnership administration in 2013, out of the ashes of Caroni 1975 Ltd, which was closed in 2003 by the Patrick Manning-led People’s National Movement (PNM) government.

The company’s two farms in Couva and Cunupia, saw a heavy emphasis on planting, harvesting and processing of hot peppers with related products being exported to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

A post-Cabinet briefing on March 16, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced the company’s closure saying it had an annual administrative bill of $6 million but sold only $700,000 in peppers.

Just after 11 am, the 77 workers who comprise a mix of young and old women and middle aged men, gathered outside the old Caroni Limited canteen located at Esperanza Road in Brechin Castle, Couva where they joined hands and prayed. As the group begged the Almighty to open new employment avenues, many started to weep.

Ex-worker Darsan Nanan, 54, a father of two little girls, was in a daze as he stared at his termination later which outlined his severance payments and also wished him, “all the best” in his future endeavours. The termination letters were signed by chairman Jerry Hospedales. Nanan said he was reliving a nightmare as he was not too long ago, retrenched by Arcelor Mittal where he worked for 12 years.

“Only God alone knows what I am going to do now,” he said. As an immediate means of survival and to provide for his family, Nanan said he will have to use his car as a PH taxi.

Mother of five Nikita Sankar wept after receiving her termination letter. “This affects me real bad because my children are all in school and my husband doesn’t have a permanent job. Right now I am sad and very frustrated,” she said. “Where I going and find work now? It is very hard. Nobody hiring these days because of the recession,” she added.

Chairman Hospedales said the workers all received ex-gratis payments which comprised their vacation leave being converted to cash, a payment of 45 days service in lieu of notice of termination and a severance payment of two weeks’ pay for each year worked. He said the 77 workers comprised 63 farm workers and 14 monthly paid employees.

Hospedales said three employees would be retained to assist in the transition period while another 19 would be employed on estates from April 20 to April 30.

Chief executive officer Sharma Lalla said a proposal was made for the creation of a workers’ cooperative to replace Caroni Green Ltd thus keeping the 77 workers employed and maintain the production of hot peppers and paw paw for export.

“I have told them (workers) to keep the faith,” Lalla said adding, “we have made a proposal to Government that speaks to the establishment of a cooperative among workers who would run these two farms on their own without a single cent of support from the State.” He said that Chairman Hospedales had indicated there should be feedback from the line ministry (Agriculture, Land and Fisheries) on this proposal by month’s end.

All property owners are now required to complete a valuation return form (VRF) in keeping with the Valuation of Land Act and submit same with supporting documents to the Valuation Division of the Finance Ministry.

The forms are to enable calculation of a property’s annual rental value to work out the rate of property tax. A Ministry of Finance release yesterday stated this is in keeping with Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s 2017 budget statement that property tax will be implemented this fiscal year.

The release said that within the next week, residential property owners can expect to receive VRFs in the mail. The forms are also available at any office of the Valuation Division and can be downloaded from the ministry’s website: www.finance.gov.tt/ propertytax The forms should be submitted in a sealed envelope to any of eight offices of the Valuation Division by May 22. The offices are located at 206, Caroni Savannah Road, Charlieville, Chaguanas; Techier Main Road, Point Fortin; Head Office, 109 Henry Street, Port-of-Spain; 29 – 31, Point-a- Pierre Road, Palms Club Building, San Fernando; Corner of Brierley and Henderson Streets, Sangre Grande; Siparia Administrative Complex, High Street in Siparia; Caroline Building, 2 Hamilton Street, Scarborough and at 25-27 Eastern Main Road in Arouca. Once submitted, the Commissioner of Valuation may notify property owners of field visits to assess and verify the information in the forms.

Property owners will be sent, via post, an assessment notice from the Board of Inland Revenue with information on the tax liability and the deadline date for payment. Property tax is governed by the Property Tax Act, 2009 and the Valuation of Land Act Chapter 58:03, which repealed the Land and Building Taxes Act Chapter 76:04 and Part V of the Municipal Corporations Act Chapter 25:04. The Valuation of Land Act was substantially amended by Act No 17 of 2009.

More information can be found at www.finance.gov.tt/propertytax or the property tax hotline 612-9700, option #7.

This was disclosed by NGC president Mark Lo Quan during a public hearing held by the Public Accounts Enterprises Committee (PAEC) at Tower D of the Portof- Spain International Waterfront Centre, yesterday. Responding to questions from PAEC chairman and Opposition senator Wade Mark, Lo Quan said, “The TTEC contract has not been in place since 1994.” He continued, “This is an area which NGC has continued to supply gas for power and has not been able to receive payments on a regular basis. That has led to arrears first of all and it has led to underpayment back to the NGC for gas.” Lo Quan said the outstanding balance which TTEC owes NGC at the end of February is US$516 million. “That is in the order of $3.5 billion.” He said discussions are ongoing between NGC and TTEC regarding funding arrangements for the arrears. He indicated that while a draft contract is ready, NGC is awaiting the final pricing arrangements from up stream suppliers.

“As you recognise, these are negotiations that are at an advanced stage.” Lo Quan said he is confident that a contract could be put forward within the next two months. Noting earlier statements by NGC chairman Gerry Brooks about the company addressing $1 billion out of $5 billion in claims against it, Mark expressed concern that NGC was “a whipping horse.” He asked whether NGC could sue any multinational energy companies for breach of contract.

Brooks replied, “To the extent that the agreements allowed, NGC has prosecuted in the case of each of these companies recovery.” However he said those recoveries are “substantially less” in comparison to claims being made against the NGC. Recalling that the agreements between NGC and the upstream companies were struck 20 years ago, Brooks said the company was very careful to ensure it properly contracted supplies of gas within the 20 year period.

“The protection at the time was that given for many years we had an over abundance of gas, penalties would not occur.” However Brooks said when no investments were made in the energy sector between 2010 to 2015, “NGC found itself in that difficult position.”

It is a barely acknowledged history as it was not on the history syllabus during my schooldays and I imagine even less so today.

Most of us are aware of the mass movement of Caribbean people only through family stories, and with regard to Panama fewer TT people travelled there for the work opportunities offered by the canal’s construction — only 1,427 of the 31,071 West Indian contracted workers were from TT, but that does not include the tens of thousands of not-contracted Caribbean workers.

In the first part of the 1900s, 90,000 Jamaicans and 45,000 Barbadians left their homes to find work, some of them to join the WWI West India Regiment and the banana plantations of Central America, but many ended up comprising two-thirds of the canal- building work force.

West Indians were used to roaming the region to earn a living. Between 1881-89, 84,000 Jamaicans alone left home for work all over the Americas; in the 1850s another previous wave had gone to work on building the railroad in Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia.

The very personal stories of some of the people who fetched up in the new country of Panama (having seceded from Colombia) to work on the canal are captured in an affecting film, Panama Canal Stories.

Based on stories handed down through generations, the lives of different families in the complex society that evolved in the canal building zone are recounted by five different directors in a series of linked short films that start in 1913 and end in contemporary Panama.

We get to see how makeshift communities of islanders were established in extremely difficult circumstances in the building zone where black and coloured West Indians were known as “silver workers,” relegated to second place by the “gold workers” who were white from anywhere, or black Americans.

We witness the shame and anger of the Panamanian people who are treated as second-class citizens by the US authorities who owned and controlled the canal until 1999.

Inevitably, lives interconnect, there is illicit love and friendship, marriage, the birth of children, joy, but also much disappointment, hurt and death — over 4,500 West Indians died in the construction of the canal, from terrible accidents, yellow fever and malaria, although the unofficial figures suggest a significantly higher number.

In her excellent book Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Non-fiction, Olive Senior gives chapter and verse to the lives of the West Indian men and women who built the canal.

Many intended to return home but inevitably many remained, numbering 50,000 in the 1920s, defying several US and Panamanians’ attempts to expel them.

A total of 22,800 West Indians were finally repatriated to the islands.

Senior shows how the experience of living under US segregation rules, hardship and exposure to radicalised thinking meant that these and other migrant workers brought back new ideas, work methods and political leadership that had profound and lasting effects on the West Indian islands as they challenged the prevailing orthodoxies.

Panama Canal Stories is one of the 27 films screened at this year’s CineLit: The Latin American and Caribbean Literary Film Festival that runs at UWI till Saturday and continues at the National Library in Port-of-Spain from tomorrow until April 30 as part of the 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest (April 26-30).

The overall winner of the seventh OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature will be announced next week S a t u r d a y at a special event during the festival.

Officials from the ministry which is headed by Minister Terrence Deyalsingh will conduct health and safety audits at Portof- Spain prison, Golden Grove prison in Arouca, Carerra Island prison and the immigration detention centre in Santa Rosa.

Similar audits done recently at the Women’s Prison (which is in the Golden Grove facility) and the Youth Training Centre (YTC) gave these two institutions a passing grade. Prisoners at the remand yard section of Golden Grove, contacted Newsday on Tuesday to complain that rats were everywhere, in prison cells, the kitchen and bathrooms.

Prison Officers Association head Ceron Richards described the situation as being not only a health crisis but a human rights breach affecting both prisoners and prison officers. He accused Government of ignoring this and other outstanding issues on the grounds that prisoners, by virtue of being incarcerated, have no choice but to live in such conditions; while prison officers are too professional and patriotic to walk off the job.

Officials in the Health Ministry confirmed being aware of a long-standing rat infestation problem at Golden Grove because of poor waste disposal methods while complaints have been coming in recently at the city prison with the latter also having to contend with a pigeon problem. Ministry officials said regular inspection is carried out at all prisons, but officials can only advise officials of the Prison Service on dealing with health issues such as rat infestation.

Health officials cannot conduct their own clean-up and/or eradication exercise because large sections of the prisons are strictly off-limits to civilians.

Attempts to reach Prisons Commissioner Sterling Stewart yesterday proved futile but an official of the Prison Service said that the issue is being addressed with some level of urgency.

This is the latest issue to cause embarrassment to the authorities in charge of running the prisons and comes on the heel of reports that prison officers had to dip into their own pockets and raise $500 to repair a malfunctioning water pump at the island prison which led to dry taps for several weeks and prisoners having to bathe in the sea.

This despite the fact that $1 million was set aside in the National Budget to effect repairs or replace aging and/or non-functioning infrastructure at the island prison.

Port Authority chairman Alison Lewis yesterday announced that The Atlantic Provider (Provider) will cost Government US$14,500 a day while The Transporter barge will cost between US$8,000 and $10,000, per day. The Provider is on a one-month contract with an option for an additional two to three months, “if needed”, while the contract for the barge, would a month, with an option for another, Lewis said.

There is a sailing scheduled for this Sunday. Lewis said the barge is already in Trinidad while the Provider will be here tomorrow.

These vessels are an interim solution and will remain in service only as long as it takes Government to select a medium-term cargo service provider. Longterm plans are to issue a tender for the construction of a vessel designed specifically to meet this country’s cargo needs as well as the physical conditions at the Port-of-Spain and Scarborough ports. Lewis spoke at a press conference at the Ministry of Works and Transport office, Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain. The tender for a medium-term provider closes on April 24, following which, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan expects to have a vessel within six weeks.

At the press conference yesterday, Sinanan alluded to a possible lawsuit for breach of contract regarding the Galicia’s current 18-month contract, which was due to end in October.

“The Attorney General (Faris Al Rawi) will have to look into whether there was a breach (of contract) by the provider,” Minister Sinanan said. He added that there is an opinion from Dr Claude Denbow SC, that there was an agreement in place. The ministry had allocated funding, Sinanan said, the provider accepted terms and conditions and everything was going well) until we got a 14-day notice that the vessel would be withdrawn.

Contacted for comment, AG Al Rawi confirmed that Government is looking into possible breach of contract and he intends to provide a clear opinion on all contractual arrangements regarding the Galicia, very soon.

The money is in a safe at the St James Police Station and being overseen by an extra duty clerk.

The money has accumulated over a five-year period although instructions were given by none other than head of the Police Service, Ag Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams, for over 1,000 people to be reimbursed.

Hundreds have complained that over the past five years, money was paid to Western Division for police officers to conduct extra duty at privately organised public events including fetes, parties, graduations and sports meet with police officers either not showing up or the number of officers paid for, being less.

In June 2015, Senior Superintendent Totaram Dookhie, Head of the Fraud Squad raided the St James police station and seized a number of documents and computers after allegations of impropriety linked to the payment of overtime and extra duty allowances. The documents were forwarded to the Police Finance Branch and instructions given for extra duty allowances owed people be reimbursed.

Yesterday, ACP Hackshaw told Newsday the audit is ongoing and once completed, moves will be made to give back the $700,000 to members of the public who paid for a service that they either did not get or got in a reduced number.

He said the audit may be lengthy since those conducting the exercise are dealing with five years’ worth of payments and claims and they would have to see who paid for what and if proof that officers failed to uphold their end of the agreement, can be made.

Sources in Western Division said there is a difficulty in reaching most of the 1,000 people making claims for reimbursement since many would have changed their cellphone numbers, email addresses, business contact info etc. If the 700,000 cannot be reimbursed, a decision will have to be made on what to do with the money since it cannot go into the Consolidated Fund since it does not belong to the State.

Mark Gokool, 34, stood before Magistrate Brambhanan Dubay charged with stealing over $40,000 in jewelry belonging to uncle Shah Gokool.

The court heard that Shah secured his house on the morning of April 16, and returned at 3.55 pm the following day.

He noticed two louvres from his bedroom window missing.

On checking, Shah realised several items of jewelry including rings, a wedding band and chains valued $38,500, and a watch worth US$800, missing.

The jewelry was kept in a chest of drawers in his bedroom. Shah reported the incident to the Ste Madeleine police and Gokool was arrested on the same day.

Court prosecutor Cleyon Seedan said that WPC Leeann Boodram reported that Gokool, previously convicted for cocaine possession, admitted to stealing the items but claimed to have already returned all but the watch, to his uncle. The watch, the accused said, was sold.

The stolen items were indeed recovered, but Shah denied that his nephew voluntarily returned them. Magistrate Dubay initiated a cross-examination of the two Gokools those involved. During cross-examination, both Shah and Gokool remained steadfast in their positions.

Magistrate Dubay asked PC Boodram if the items were returned to Shah in her presence or the presence of any other officer, to which the officer replied, “no.” Dubay concluded that there was no evidence of Gokool ever returning the stolen items and was thus guilty of larceny and house breaking.

Gokool offered to compensate and apologise to his uncle, but Shah said he did not want compensation.

“He draws very good,” said Shah. “He is an intelligent person. He just needs help. I just want him to go right.” Gokool was ordered to pay $2,000 compensation and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment with hard labour.

Ayers-Caesar was presiding over the private complaint which began on January 20, 2014.

On March 24, Ayers-Caesar ruled that she was satisfied that sufficient evidence was presented to have a sentence imposed on Bakr for failing to appear before the commission of inquiry in 2013.

She adjourned the opening of Bakr’s defence to April 14, when lawyers representing the Muslimeen’s leader sought an adjournment to await a response from the Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard,SC, on their call for him (Gaspard) to intervene and discontinue the private complaint.

Ayers-Caesar granted the adjournment to yesterday’s date (April 19), however, she was sworn in as a High Court judge on April 12.

Hearing of the private complaint came up in the Eight Magistrate’s Court yesterday before Deputy Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle, who adjourned the matter to May 17 for her to receive instructions.

She did not indicate from whom she is expected to receive instructions but told lawyers she had before her a list of all the partheard matters.

In a statement yesterday, the Judiciary’s Court Protocol and Information Manager Alicia Carter-Fisher assured that the magistrates’ court would not be adversely affected by the elevation of the former chief magistrate.

The statement also noted that Deputy Chief Magistrate Busby Earle-Caddle will act in the post of chief magistrate until an appointment is made by the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC).