In a brief interview, Lewis said she felt thrilled, happy and thanked God to be alive to receive a Diplomatic passport and also to have her name written on one of CAL’s fleet or air planes. Asked if she would have preferred a monetary gift, Lewis said, “Put my name on the plane. My name will remain forever and ever in time to come. But when you get the cash … the cash comes and go as everyone wants a piece of it. I am satisfied with their offers.” Lewis added, “When I got the news yesterday (Thursday) I felt thrilled and was very, very happy about what government had plan to do. To know that my government will be giving me that prestigious award, I am happy.” She continued, “I always wonder why my government…why my people in Trinidad and Tobago don’t honour me in that way? But the time has come. I will say nothing happens before its time.

I thanked God that I am alive and I will be receiving a Diplomatic passport and also I will like to thank Caribbean Airlines for what they will be doing for me. I want to thank them very much.” Lewis said she will continue to fly the flag for TT through her music. Asked if she would have appreciated or preferred getting a house and land from the government, Lewis said, “No, no, no.

I have enough house and land already. I am satisfied with the plane being named after me and getting the Diplomatic passport, I am truly satisfied.” (See Page 14A) At Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, Dr Nyan Gadsby Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts said Cabinet made the decision to give Calypso Rose a diplomatic passport and to name one of Caribbean Airlines aircraft after her in recognition of her achievements.

In February, Lewis was the first local artiste to win the French version of the Grammy’s – the Victoires de la Musique – after her platinum selling album Far From Home, was voted Album of the Year.

According to the Ministry of Education, students’ average attendance at the secondary level was 18.28 percent this year compared with 22.8 percent last year. At the primary level it was 26.3 percent as against 31 percent last year. At the same time, the average attendance of secondary school teachers was 77.6 percent and 81.2 percent for primary schools.

“We must be concerned and we have to arrest the situation one way or the other,” said Minister of Education Anthony Garcia on Wednesday. “Of course all our students are under the jurisdiction of their parents and the question must be asked: why do the parents find it necessary to allow so many of their children to remain at home today? Is it because they fear that the teachers would not be in attendance? That fear is unfounded.” Must it really come to a situation where a minister has to beg parents to send their children to school? Attendance on Ash Wednesday should be routine. When Carnival is over work continues.

We have clearly not been able to arrest this problem so a deeper look at possible solutions needs to happen. Perhaps the time has come to ask whether it will make a difference if the school term is adjusted to give children vacation time.

As pointed out by several stakeholders, the lost time could be made up at another point in the calendar.

There are valid reasons for making an adjustment.

The challenge posed by Carnival is not only in its aftermath. It is not only the week after Carnival Monday and Tuesday that presents challenges, but also the week leading up to the festival. Schools engage in preparations for the Children’s Carnival and they have their own Carnival-related events and jump-ups.

It is also true that parents play mas and may be distracted. While teachers are generally said to not be absent from classes on Ash Wednesday, a minority clearly do turn up absent. (We have not been given the daily absenteeism rate for teachers by the ministry to be able to compare attendance on Ash Wednesday with the normal level.) That said, we agree there is a need to instill discipline in students.

Carnival Monday and Carnival Tuesday are technically not public holidays. This is where culture and societal priorities come into play.

If as a society we value Carnival as a cultural product (ignoring for a moment the flailing standards of recent years), then there is good reason to allow students the space to explore Carnival.

By placing Carnival within a vacation period, a more concerted effort could be made to get children involved in all of the various art forms – mas, pan, calypso, soca. This could involve special camps and workshops being set up to act as “tasters” for interested students. Also, by giving children more free time they will be better able to appreciate the wealth of activities Carnival involves, such as Canboulay and blue devils in Paramin.

The reality of the situation is that after the celebrations, the entire society is affected. It may simply be that the problem is most glaring at schools.

However, studies should also be done to ascertain how Carnival affects the private and public sectors as well. Many departments and businesses suffer from high levels of absenteeism.

Whatever is done, it must be done with careful examination of all the pros and cons. But it is clear there is a need to reposition the festival in such a way as to maximise its sustainability in the long run and to minimise the adverse effect on productivity.

In 1891, a proclamation declared it was illegal to “throw or cause to be thrown upon any person or resident, lime, flour or any other substance liquid or solid.” By this time, the stickfight had been pushed underground and other elements of the Jamette Carnival were now the focus of the legislators and upper classes.

After the 1881 Canboulay Riots, the colonial government passed law after law, intent on crushing the Carnival of the working classes.

The legal onslaught meant that by 1888, just seven years after the stickfighters led by Joe Talmana had successfully defended their culture, one of the elitist newspapers could write that “the Carnival may be considered now as having been successfully divested of its coarser, more revolting and dangerous features.” Persistent legislation had shoved the stickfight underground, suppressing the potency of the art form to the festival.

More than 100 years after that proclamation, and almost 200 after the 1834 Carnival celebrations of the African began, we are still uncomfortable with this festival.

Every Ash Wednesday statistics are trotted out to bemoan “absenteeism” in schools and offices.

This week, there was even an entire analysis in the press about the impact of Carnival on “lower productivity levels” for business. If cultural tourism is considered one of the important paths to economic diversity, why haven’t we developed that partnership instead of complaining about Carnival? Is it logical to expect that the same people who create our festival would flip a switch on Ash Wednesday as if nothing happened? What does this say to the hundreds of children, young people, parents and teachers in the panyards till early in the morning, bending wire, sticking on feathers, writing and performing music and showcasing their creations all day Monday and Tuesday? And why do we describe it as going back to “normal”? The people wringing their hands, saying that we need to “fix” this problem must understand that their cause is already lost. As long as we continue to treat Carnival as separate from society, there will never be synergy.

Carnival is not just a party. It is time we entrust it to people with vision, philosophy, sensitivity and respect. It is time we integrate it into our education system and our social structures. It is time to stop letting business interests dictate its direction.

Twenty-first century attitudes towards our festival are only slightly less than the contempt and repulsion of 19th century elites. Happily, the potential for resistance by the culture bandits is as strong now as it was then.

How will this latest struggle be told? Read your history or go ask Bunji and Machel. As the stickfighter says, “Send them by the thousand, I go meet them by the junction!” Dara Healy is a performance artist and founder of the N G O , the Ind i g e – n o u s Creative A r t s N e t – work – ICAN

Al Rawi made this disclosure as he opened debate on the Marriage Bill 2016 in the House of Representatives.

Stating the aim of the legislation is,” centred upon finding the best fit for an established protection for the children in our society,” Al Rawi said there were 3,478 child marriages in TT from 1996 to 2016. Al Rawi said this included 1,156 civil marriages, 526 Muslim marriages and 1,796 Hindu marriages. Drilling down into these figures, the AG said a “very startling phenomenon” was found when attention was paid to the occupation of the husband in child marriages that took place over the last decade.

As he listed these occupations, Al Rawi remarked, “They ring almost true for every child marriage.” The AG cited a case where a 13-yearold married a male with, “student as occupation.” He then referred to a case in 2008 of a marriage between a 12-year-old girl and, “a well employed fast food attendant.” Al Rawi added, “The fact is, in TT, in 2016 we have had child marriages.” He said there were 53 child marriages last year, which saw the girls between the ages of 14 and 16 years being married.

Responding to a question from Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan, Al Rawi said these marriages cut across several religions.

“This is not a Hindu, a Muslim phenomenon at all. The statistical information shows that Christians are equally in the same category,” he declared. Saying it was unfortunate that some persons were trying to create the impression that child marriages were restricted to Hinduism and Islam, Al Rawi said that argument, “must be entirely rejected.

In terms of gender distribution, Al Rawi said, “We found that of the 3,478 marriages, 3,404 of those were for girls and only 74 of them were men. That shows a gender disparity of 97.85 percent female and 2.1566 percent male.” Stressing that one must distinguish the argument of religious belief versus religious convention, Al Rawi said it was not correct to assume that child marriages was a solution to prevent teenage pregnancies.

The AG said available data shows that 173 abortions took place last year, involving girls between the ages of 11 and 16. However he said that information, “does not include the private abortions, the backyard abortions, the neighbour abortions.” Noting a democracy and not a theocracy exists in TT, Al Rawi said the Constitution shows that certain rights can be abrogated by virtue of legislation being passed with a special majority. He explained this is done on the basis that it is reasonable in a society like TT, “that accepts democratic principles.” Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh appealed to Opposition MPs not to abstain when it was time to vote on the bill. Saying no MP could be ambivalent to 18 years being legal age for marriage, Deyalsingh said there was nothing wrong with men being employed in the occupations listed by Al-Rawi. However he asked what kind of future would they be offering to a girl under 18 years. He circulated a newspaper article to MPs urging them not to take the position adopted by a person named “D Parsuram Maharaj” regarding child marriages. Deyalsingh hoped this person was never a parliamentarian. The article dated November 10, 2011, alleged that D Parsuram Maharaj was former transport minister Devant Maharaj.

Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister Ayanna Webster- Roy said as the mother of three children, one of them an 11-yearold girl, the thought of an adult man being with her 11-year old, made her skin crawl. Recalling she got married when she was 22 years old, Webster-Roy said girls and boys must be allowed to have their childhood. She told Government and Opposition MPs that now was the time, “to take a bold step and do what is right.” She declared, “The time for affirmative action is now.”

Newsday understands that the man identified by police as Evan Modeste of Concord Gardens in Malabar, got into an altercation with the men at Hart’s Cut Bay, Chaguaramas.

After the fracas he was seen talking to a friend, to whom he handed his cellphone. He then went into the sea and at about 9.40 am, began experiencing difficulty and disappeared under the water.

Coast Guard and emergency services were immediately alerted and a search was conducted.

It was not until 4.20 pm on Carnival Sunday, that Coast Guard officers found his body. The body was fished out of the sea and taken to the Forensic Science Centre in St James where an autopsy was performed, after relatives identified the body.

The autopsy, done by Dr Eslyn McDonald- Burris confirmed that the man died as a result of drowning.

Samples were taken by the pathologist to confirm whether or not he had been intoxicated at the time of his death.

Cpl Moses is continuing investigations.

The man, whose arrest by concerned citizens was recorded via cellular phone camera and the video uploaded to social media websites, was scheduled to appear in court yesterday but a leak in the holding cells of the courthouse led to all cases being postponed to next week.

As a result, the man will spend this weekend behind bars at the Malabar police station.

The uploaded video has since gone viral, eliciting hundreds of comments.

According to reports, on Thursday afternoon, passers by found the man sitting in a car with a young girl, who was in her school uniform.

People noticed that the man’s zipper was down, he had no underwear on and his penis was exposed.

The passers by quickly grabbed and pulled the man out of the car, forced him to lie on the road and tied his hands behind his back with a length of rope.

A report was made and Malabar police officers arrived, handcuffed and hauled him off to the police station.

The child’s parents were called in and in their presence, she was interviewed by investigators.

A decision was made late Thursday evening to have a formal charge of indecent exposure laid against the man.

Constable Christian Yorke of Sherwood Park, who was assigned to the Scarborough CID Task Force, was not called upon to plead as the charge was laid indictably. The Constable was charged on Thursday afternoon with the rape of the woman, after the investigator got instructions from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

When he appeared before Magistrate Prince, PC Yorke was granted bail in the sum of $100,000 with a surety and instructed to reappear in court on March 31. The charge alleges that at 10.55 pm on Carnival Monday, a woman was raped at her apartment home.

She later filed a report and investigations were conducted which led to an arrest.

In a press release yesterday, Moonilal said: “The inept (Prime Minister Dr Keith) Rowley continues to place emphasis on speed guns and breathalysers while the violent crime siege has turned Trinidad and Tobago into one of the deadliest countries in the world.”

“I plead with Rowley’s regime to place deserved priority to taming this bane of our times so the country would be spared more anguish as that being endured by families and friends of Thursday night murder victims.”

The minister said Thursday’s triple murder in Debe was a “direct result of the PNM government’s rank incompetence in handling the ever-worsening crime scourge throughout Trinidad and Tobago.”

The country has never been more unsafe, said Moonilal, and the triple murder made clear the government’s “lack of political will to drive the police service to protect citizens.” Moonilal said “Recent moves to create safe zones at Laventille, Sea Lots and Beetham Estate have seen crime being exported to areas like Debe, Tunapuna, Chaguanas, St Joseph, Penal and other communities, which the Government has shown no resolve in protecting.”

He called for an upgrade of the highway patrol office in Debe to a full police station and for the re-introduction of the Community Comfort patrol.

If the government cannot handle the crime situation, “they must resign and call a general election now,” said Moonilal.

He remains the chairman of the NCC.” Reporters asked Gadsby Dolly this same question following the post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s on Thursday. At that time, the minister said, ““There is no resignation from Mr De Silva.” During the briefing, Gadsby Dolly indicated that she received a report from the NCC regarding a glitch during Sunday’s Dimanche Gras show and corrective action is being taken to prevent a repeat of that issue at next year’s show.

The minister said the post-Carnival analysis has begun and will continue,” as we look to improvements in Carnival 2018.” She said this exercise involves the Planning Ministry, Economic Development Board, the Central Statistical Office and her ministry.

Ramadharsingh said the damage puts the public at risk and makes the beach facilities which attracts “bumper crowds” on public holidays and weekends unsafe and unsightly._ “The beach is within the boundaries of the Siparia Regional Corporation on one end and the Penal/Debe Regional Corporation on the other,” said Ramadharsingh. “We decided to come together and make a call to ensure the matter is being given the attention it deserves.”_