Dennil Ramsawack, 29, and brother Derreck, 19, appeared before Senior Magistrate Margaret Alert and were remanded into custody after the charge was read to them. They were arrested by detectives of the Homicide Division Region Three. Ramsawack was arrested last week Wednesday and his brother on the day after.

Deoraj Bedasie, 52, an ex-Caroni 1975 Ltd worker went missing on March 25, from his home at Black Street, Reform Village and his relatives reported the matter to the police.

Nicknamed ‘Breddo’, his photo was posted on social media websites as family members searched for him.

Last week Wednesday, Bedasie’s body was taken out from a latrine pit close to his home by Crime Scene Investigators. The body was chopped and burnt. Following investigations by detective Corporal Mitra Singh of the Homicide Bureau (Region Three), the brothers were arrested and instructions were given by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to lay a murder charge against them. Yesterday, at mid-morning, the handcuffed brothers were escorted from the San Fernando CID to the courthouse. Senior Magistrate Alert read the charge that on a date unknown, between March 25 and last week Wednesday, they murdered Bedasie at Reform Road in the county of Victoria.

The accused men were informed that bail would not be granted and were remanded into custody to reappear on May 9.

Several female relatives of the accused men attended the hearing.

We warn that the State must take pre-emptive action. It must reform the regulation of safety standards in the city as well as the nation. If the embers are not doused, a major conflagration could ensue.

It will be a perpetual case of fire fire, in our wire wire – to paraphrase Calypso Rose.

On Monday, two months after fire damaged the old Social Development Ministry building off Independence Square in Port-of-Spain, the same building caught fire. But this time, the blaze gutted the entire structure. This came mere weeks after the landmark Mas Camp Pub (De Nu Pub) was engulfed by fire in a separate incident. Surrounding buildings were also damaged.

Amid much speculation, the causes of both fires are not yet clear.

Do they relate to weather conditions which have been unbearably hot in some quarters? Were they electrical? Were they caused by specific actions? Did sprinkler systems go off? Did alarms go off? Were such basic measures even in place? As a city, Port-of-Spain has too often been damaged by fire. In 1808, a major fire destroyed most of the wooden buildings and houses of the capital. The merchants of the town rebuilt them with stone from the Laventille quarry.

In 1897, there was another fire on lower Frederick Street, resulting in architect George Brown designing and supervising the building of “The Stores.” Complete with iron banisters, plate glass windows, mezzanines and lantern roofs, they were fashionable and durable.

Some of this architectural heritage is still evident today. Major fires also included those relating to the Water Riots of 1903 – the anniversary of which was observed this month – and the 1990 terrorist attack on the capital by the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

Whatever the causes of the two most recent fires, it is clear enough there are not enough measures in place.

Buildings need to have smoke detectors which can pick up the start of a fire early, and also trigger measures to douse the flames.

While the old Social Development Ministry building was already damaged, this does not absolve the State of responsibility. The damaged structure should have been secured. Its location in the heart of the city, close to residential quarters and business places, meant untold harm could have ensued if the fire had spread further.

We are also cognizant of the fact that building codes are relevant to the issue of fire safety, inclusive of appropriate evacuation design.

All in all, the situation does not look promising. The Parliament has heard – under a previous administration – that the city is not ready in the event of a major fire.

With many skyscrapers in the vicinity of the central business district, an audit of fire preparedness is a must.

But the problem extends beyond the capital.

Sunday’s tragic case of the Wilson family in Arima is a reminder of just how easily a fire can turn deadly. A toddler, who had initially been rescued, managed to end up back inside the family home.

Neighbours alerted the Arima Fire Station. However, trucks were at the scene of a nearby bush fire and were unable to respond immediately to the blaze.

We have to be sensitive to the configuration of our capital city and to ensure that the Fire Service has the requisite tools to battle there and elsewhere. Otherwise the price we will pay will continue to be too high.

I have spent the last week deep in conversation with peace-building practitioners from across generations and continents. Being in South Africa, many of the conversations turned to Zuma’s governance and the protest marches that have spread across the main cities of the country.

Even if we were not sitting in South Africa our deliberations around peaceful transitions of political power would naturally have turned to South Africa. For many, particularly those of us in the African diaspora, have revelled in the collapse of apartheid and the rise of a world leader of impeccable integrity.

Has not Barbados also recently renamed a park in commemoration of Nelson Mandela? Like many curious tourists, I visited the Robben Island prison cells in which Mandela and his compatriots discussed the road to a South Africa without discrimination. I have read the uplifting stories of the truth and reconciliation processes and I quote liberally from the South African Constitution as a leading example of an inclusive, human-rights-driven declaration of a nation’s ideals.

And yet today the prospect for politically-driven violence is a real and present danger. Not by the State against its powerless citizens as before, but between people wishing to defend the way power is being wielded by the State, and those not willing to accept a state of powerlessness ever again.

Inequality is not just a state of mind, or a sense of injustice that you feel in your heart. It is a grumbling in the stomach. As one bright young activist from the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation said to me, “You can’t eat justice.” Politicians the world over who pay lip service to dialogue processes are doomed to failure, and the sad truth is they pull their countries down with them. It is contempt for people’s aspirations for which there can be no reasonable comeback.

One South African columnist offered the insight that there is a “scary scenario” beginning to unfold if Zuma is forced to relinquish power through a motion of no confidence: South Africa is likely to experience open violence and unprecedented chaos that might be worse than what was averted in the 1990s. The language and tone of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League and other forces that support the embattled President indicate they would be willing to violently reject the result of any democratic process to unseat Zuma.

Zuma has made quick work of unravelling the long road to freedom that Mandela walked for the South African people of all races.

Zuma’s governance has been characterised by a series of shocking and destabilising corruption scandals, financial mismanagement and heavy-handed but incompetent leadership.

His disregard for the unanimous judgment by the 11 judges that comprise the Constitutional Court who found him in violation of the hard-fought-for constitution represented, for most South Africans, a profound betrayal.

Yet the ANC, increasingly packed with loyalists as Zuma shuffles out one strong-willed minister after the next, has circled their wagons around him. This gives Zuma a false sense of confidence I suspect.

In the face of nationwide marches and the threat of more to come, he dismissed them as racist and anti- black.

It is true that there is scepticism about the extent to which the declaration of South Africa’s impending junk status has rallied people who have not been vocal before, but racism is still a very raw subject in South Africa and there is nothing to be gained by a defensive stance that seeks to whip up racism sentiment to detract from governance issues. It will not end well.

Hyacinth appeared before Senior Magistrate Margaret Alert in the San Fernando Magistrates’ court, charged with possession of an unlicensed pistol and ammunition, and firing a gun within 40 meters of a public road. He pleaded guilty to all three charges.

The magistrate heard from court prosecutor Sgt Denzil Alexander, that at about 5.40 am on Sunday, Hyacinth saw men beating his 18-year-old son at the front of Club Mumbai located along the SS Erin Road in Debe.

Hyacinth, the court heard, whipped out a gun from his waist and fired several shots in the air. He then threw the gun away and ran to the Debe Police Post. Constable Sandeep Maraj investigated and later recovered the gun and two spent shells.

Hyacinth was cautioned, the magistrate heard, and he told PC Maraj: “Officer, they start beating up my son, pelting bottle as if to kill him. I take out my gun shoot in the air to get them off my son.” Attorney Subhas Panday said his client had no criminal record and no pending charges. Magistrate Alert told Hyacinth that while she holds some empathy for him, as he responded to his son being attacked, however, there could have been dire, even deadly consequences for his actions.

“You could have been standing here before me on a murder charge,” the magistrate said. For possession of a gun, Hyacinth was ordered to pay $3,500 and for the ammunition, $1,500.

On the charge of discharging the firearm in a public place, he was placed on own bail in the sum of $15,000 to return to court on May 9, after the Magistrate changed his guilty plea to one of not-guilty.

Police received a report of an attempted break-in at about 3.30 am yesterday. When police arrived, they were told by one of the occupants of a house that a man identified as Bisnath Askaran from Riverside Road, Poole Village was struck in the head with a piece of wood as he tried to break into the house. After being hit, Askaran walked a short distance before falling into a drain. Emergency services were alerted but Askaran was pronounced dead at the scene.

His relatives gathered at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday where they said that the victim was last seen alive at his home an hour before the alleged break-in attempt. “He woke up this morning at about 2 am, and he was light-headed or something. Something happened to him and he just walked out of the house. He went by a neighbour’s house, and he knocked on the wall. Then someone said that they came out and hit him with a piece of wood in his back, but he has no injuries to his back,” a relative claimed.

Askaran was described as a person who liked to go out and drink.

Askaran was unemployed and was receiving public assistance. He was the father of a 14-year-old girl. No arrest has been made in relation to the incident and investigations are ongoing.

Aziz “Sam” Shah, 26, brother Aleem, 19, and Doneil Roberts, 35, appeared in the First Court before Senior Magistrate Armina Deonarinesingh jointly charged with Trim’s murder. They are also jointly charged with stealing Trim’s car.

The magistrate read the first charge which alleged that sometime between Monday April 3 and Thursday April 6, at Robert Trace, Quarry Village in Santa Flora, they murdered Trim.

The second charged alleged that last week Tuesday at the same place, armed with a firearm, they robbed Trim of his car, during which time they used personal violence. The car, a Nissan B14 is valued $38,000.

Both charges were laid by PC Ferguson of the Homicide Bureau Region III. They were not called upon to enter a plea as the charges were laid indictably.

Sgt Starr Jacob prosecuted.

The Shah brothers are both scavengers from Springvale, Claxton Bay, police said.

Roberts, is unemployed and is from Couva. Trim lived at Flora Terrace off Dass Trace, Enterprise, Chaguanas. He was shot dead. Police arrested the men on Tuesday following which Cpls Francis and Bobb and PC Noyan and other officers continued investigations.

On Monday night, PC Ferguson laid the charges.

Yesterday, attorney Robert Mitchell represented Aziz Shah whom he said was shot in the right leg by police. Shah, the attorney added, was taken for medical treatment while in custody.

Attorney Dana O’Neil-Gervais who represented Aleem, accused police of beating him. Attorney Rhea Sookhansingh who represented Roberts said she was ready to proceed with the case and requested fill disclosure.

Magistrate Deonarinesingh remanded the three men into custody and adjourned the case to May 9.

In an address at a ‘Sexual Harassment in the Workplace’ workshop yesterday at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s Seebaran-Suite told human resources professionals that the EOC has the mandate to receive and conciliate complaints in relation to sexual discrimination including sexual harassment in the workplace.

The workshop, which was facilitated by the EOC was organised by the Association of Female Executives of TT and the Human Resources Management Association of TT (HRMATT). Noting that statistics are not available on sexual harassment cases in the workplace, she said the EOC has been receiving complaints, but not in overwhelming numbers.

The EOC is at the stage, she said, where with other stakeholders, it is looking at institutionalising the best methods to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. “Sexual harassment is a problem that has been with us for many years,” she said.

The EOC has a mandate to receive and conciliate complaints in certain areas, she said, and one of those areas is employment which covers sexual discrimination. “Sexual discrimination includes sexual harassment in the work place. So that if a victim of sexual harassment in the workplace does not receive satisfaction after making a complaint within the workplace so that they can get the problem solved, they can come to the EOC for a remedy as the law now exists,” she said.

Seebaran-Suite said sexual harassment is a problem that occurs in every kind of organisation and in the Caribbean it affects women more than men.

Several large employers in TT in the banking and conglomerate sector, the public sector and the energy sector have already enacted codes to provide a channel for lodging complaints and seeking redress, she said.

“This should involve training and retraining ideally conducted by human resource departments, which are usually well equipped to conduct training of this nature,” she said.

She defined sexual harassment as “the unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace, at an unwilling victim to whom that misconduct is offensive, disturbing, upsetting, worrying and/or psychologically harmful. It may be severe or pervasive enough to affect the person’s ability to cope in what may become an increasingly hostile work environment.”

PC Asceviero of San Fernando CID appeared in the San Fernando Magistrates’ court to give evidence in the case with a plaster under his left eyelid. Gregory Zoma, 32, appeared before Senior Magistrate Margaret Alert charged with assaulting the policeman, possession of marijuana and resisting arrest. He pleaded guilty to all three charges.

The magistrate heard that at about 4 pm on Monday, PC Asceviero was with other police officers on patrol in Tarouba when they stopped a vehicle in which Zoma was a passenger.

They searched the defendant and found a quantity of marijuana.

Court prosecutor Sgt Denzil Alexander said Zoma exited the car and confronted Asceviero.

When the policeman attempted to hold on to Zoma’s hands, the latter cuffed him in the face. Zoma’s attorney Shawn Teekasingh said the defendant had neither mother nor father and eight convictions for marijuana over the past ten years. Magistrate Alert said there are many orphans who will not fight back at a police officer.

“You seem to have a love affair with marijuana,” Magistrate Alert said.

She ordered Zoma to pay a fine of $2,000 for the marijuana possession, $1,000 as a fine for resisting arrest and compensation in the sum of $2,500 or 30 days in jail.

Trinitaro Cocoa may soon be as uniquely branded as French champagne or Scottish whiskey, the statement suggested.

The Ministry’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has worked with the Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Co-operative Society Limited through law firm, Fitzwilliam Stone Furness-Smith & Morgan, to file the first application for a geographical indication (GI) under the Geographical Indications Act, Chap. 82:78. This is also the first GI application for cocoa in CARICOM.

“The Ministry is pleased to announce that on 17th February, 2017 the first GI was filed in Trinidad and Tobago by the Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Co-operative Society for cocoa beans originating in the Montserrat Hills, Gran Couva. Trinitario cocoa has an international reputation as a fine-flavoured cocoa and is coveted worldwide by renowned chocolatiers.” The World Intellectual Property Organization, (“WIPO”) said a GI is a mark used to identify a good coming from a specific locale with a unique quality, reputation or characteristic attributable to that geographical area, such as Champagne, Darjeeling Tea, Scotch Whiskey and Roquefort Cheese.

“The registration of a GI provides for significant benefits. GIs not only attract a higher price premium in the local, regional and international markets but also contribute to country branding and enhancement of a country’s reputation. GIs also promote and enhance rural development, local culture and traditions. As such, Trinidad and Tobago stands to benefit substantially from the registration of GIs.” Recognizing the benefits of GIs, the IPO has actively engaged the local cocoa, honey and pepper industries. The IPO hosted a One Day Workshop on GIs on February 9 to sensitize stakeholders on GIs and the types of intellectual property protection available for their products. Participants included representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture, MCFCSL, Trinidad and Tobago Bee-keepers’ Association, Cocoa Research Centre (University of the West Indies (UWI), Carmel Valley Estate, Vista Dora Estate, Ortinola Estate, All Trinidad and Tobago Agricultural Co-operative Society Limited and Westland for Green.

This Workshop preceded a recent workshop on GI’s held by WIPO and the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and its project REACH for Caricom countries on February 14 to 16 at the UWI, St. Augustine. “The IPO is optimistic that the first GI application for cocoa beans in Trinidad and Tobago and the English-speaking Caribbean, will pave the road for other GI applications in the near future. The Office remains committed to assisting applicants in this regard.”

Speaking afterwards with reporters, Lewis said, “This is a new board.

Whatever transpired with the last board is not for us to opine on in any way.” She described herself as “a team player” and said this is reflected in her track record in public life.

“I can never be on my own, on a frolic of my own, doing my own thing,” she said. Lewis said she and other members of the new board are “at one with doing what is best in the circumstances, not just on the Tobago issue but on the port as a whole in terms of its efficiency and ensuring it is restructured and reorganised to becoming the most efficient port in the Caribbean.” Other board members are Brandon Primus, Suzette Baptiste and Dexter Jaggernauth.