NEWS
Bus route, highway cleared after Beetham protest
Commuters and drivers on the Priority Bus Route (PBR) and the Beetham Highway had to wait in traffic for about an hour as disgruntled Beetham residents burned garbage, blocking drivers entering Port of Spain early on Monday morning. Police said residents, upset over alleged delays with sewerage works in Beetham Gardens, took matters into their own hands at around 5 am, throwing rubble and garbage onto the west- and eastbound lanes of the highway and part of the PBR. Read more here
POLITICS
UNC: Public Service vaccine mandate implementation 'chaotic'
Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh is calling on government to implement a number of measures to make working spaces for public servants safer, rather than trying to impose a vaccine mandate. He also condemned the chaotic manner in which the mandate had been implemented. Speaking at the Opposition’s media conference on Sunday, he said he believed safe zones could be created within workplaces. Read more here
Opposition wins tense Venezuela vote in Chavez home region
Venezuela’s opposition won an historic victory in a tense rerun gubernatorial election in Barinas, a region ruled by the family of late President Hugo Chavez for more than two decades. According to results announced late on Sunday, opposition lawmaker Sergio Garrido, 54, defeated the ruling party’s candidate Jorge Arreaza, 48, who served as the country’s vice president and foreign minister and was Chavez’s son-in-law. Garrido, who according to the National Electoral Council (CNE) won 55.36 percent of the vote, welcomed the result. “With the unity and strength of each of you, we have succeeded … succeeded in overcoming obstacles and adversity despite all that we have had to face,” Garrido wrote on Twitter. Read more here
BUSINESS
CSO: Food, drink prices jumped 7.6%
Food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 7.6 per cent between October 2020 and October 2021, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) reported yesterday. In a memorandum on the Index of Retail Prices (RPI) published for general information yesterday, attributed to the acting director of statistics, Andre Blanchard, the CSO noted that the All Items Index of Retail Prices increased by 3.9 per cent between October 2020 and last October. Read more here
REGIONAL
GTU-organised‘Isolation Day’ illegal
Noting that today’s ‘Isolation Day’ organised by the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) equates to illegal strike action, Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton on Sunday said that teachers cannot be paid for the days that they do not work. Minister Hamilton in a social media video message made it clear that the planned industrial action does not follow proper labour regulations, which include the need for notice to be given to the employer, in this case, the Ministry of Education (MoE). Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Kazakhstan unrest was coup attempt, says president
Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has described deadly violence last week as an attempted coup d'etat. He told leaders of a military alliance of ex-Soviet states the action had been co-ordinated by a "single centre", but did not name those responsible. President Putin said Kazakhstan had been targeted by international terrorism, but provided no evidence for this claim. He added that Russia would never allow revolutions in the region. Read more here
10th January 2022