NEWS

Archbishop: Lent a time to end prejudice

The Lenten season must be the start of members of the different races banding together to stamp out prejudice in all its forms.So said RC Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon during the midday Ash Wednesday service at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, Harris Promenade, San Fernando on Wednesday.Harking back to the 1970 Black Power movement, when Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians banded together against racial discrimination, he said that moment had “reset” the class/colour divide in TT.“In 1970 there was one moment when the African community and the East Indian community actually came together and acted in solidarity together. It was one moment when that difference in race didn’t make any difference, and that’s the country we need to become, where race and class and gender are no longer dividers why we treat others special or bad.” Read more here

Inspection stickers worry for PTSC bus drivers

Bus dri­vers at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) are con­cerned about the ab­sence of in­spec­tion stick­ers and in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates. They say they fear that this can af­fect their per­son­al li­cens­es if de­mer­it points are giv­en by li­cens­ing of­fi­cers dur­ing ran­dom in­spec­tion ex­er­cis­es on the na­tion’s road­ways. In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 20 ad­dressed to Bevon Cook, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Op­er­a­tions, the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union Branch Com­mit­tee lodged a for­mal com­plaint and gave PTSC sev­en days to re­spond to their con­cerns. The let­ter stat­ed: “This mat­ter is of grave con­cern to us and we are, once again, re­quest­ing that you ad­dress it with ur­gency in an ef­fort to en­sure that no dri­ver falls vic­tim to the De­mer­it Point Sys­tem. Not on­ly is it in the in­ter­est of the dri­vers as it pro­tects their liveli­hood, but so too does it safe­guard PTSC from los­ing man­pow­er when em­ploy­ees are un­able to re­spon­si­bly ex­e­cute their du­ties due to the in­abil­i­ty to dri­ve.” Read more here

POLITICS

Young: Glass bottleban a success

Minister of National Security Stuart Young, thanked the public on Carnival Tuesday, for their co-operation on the glass bottle ban and believes the ban will continue at future Carnivals. The Carnival (prohibition of glass bottles) regulations, 2020 was approved earlier this year which bans anyone who isn’t authorised from possessing a glass bottle near a Carnival event in public between 4 am on Monday and 12 am on Tuesday. “The people have been really working with the Police Service, so where the police have asked them to dispose of their glass bottles, they are doing so and it is well accepted by the public – by everyone – it was unanimous, and it will continue into the following years,” Young said. He thanked the public for being cooperative with the glass bottle ban and said there have been no major crime incidents. On Tuesday, Young said Carnival 2020 was a safe and successful one. Read more here

PM’s wife urges youths to take health serious

Stu­dents from sev­er­al schools with­in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons have been urged to place their health as a top pri­or­i­ty, since their health is their wealth and that the health of Trinidad and To­ba­go was all about the health of its youth. The com­ment came from Mrs Sharon Row­ley, wife of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, pa­tron of the Fifth Edi­tion of En To­To’s Sec­ondary School Fit­ness Fair held be­fore Car­ni­val at the Nel­son Man­dela Park, St Clair. The theme for the event this year was “It’s ok to do Right”. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were al­so in at­ten­dance in­clud­ing Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Sham­fa Cud­joe, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both the Min­istries of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Health and Ed­u­ca­tion. Read more here

BUSINESS

Defeating a $114m debt

One hundred million dollars was spent on facilities and infrastructure development for sporting facilities in TT for year ending September 30, 2019. But, Sport Company of TT (SporTT) chairman Douglas Camacho told Business Day in a recent interview, that the amount is not close to the funds required to properly maintain all of the sporting facilities in the country. SporTT made its audited 2019 financial statements public on January 28. The state company received most of its money through a $127.9 million government grant, $11 million less than the subvention in 2018. And it recorded a $114 million deficit for 2019. Read more here

Tourist arrivals up 3.5 per cent

Trinidad and Tobago experienced a 3.5 per cent increase in tourist arrivals for 2019, but a decline of 27.2 per cent in cruise ship arrivals. Read more here

REGIONAL

Guyana begins search for company to market its crude

GUYANA has commenced a search for a company to market its crude entitlement and those interested must have at least five years’ experience in the field; show their annual turnover and tax clearance for the last five years; give indication of any pending litigation and more, to meet the strict criteria for shortlisting. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy (DE) published the ‘Request for Expression of Interest (EOI) – Provision of Marketing Services for the Cooperative Republic of Guyana’s Oil Entitlement from the Lisa Destiny FPSO Vessel’. The five-page document stated that the duration of services for such an Oil Marketing / Trading Company will last 12 months, between 2020 and 2021 and EOIs are to be submitted by March 12, 2020, to the Chairman of National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). Read more here

Out Sex Perverts - Child Welfare Boss Calls For Offender Registry To Be Made Public

Amid growing concern about an increase in sexual crimes against juveniles in Jamaica, the head of the country’s chief child-protection and welfare organisation has given strong endorsement of a more transparent sex offender registry. The debate over the sex crime roll was reignited last week after a six-year-old girl was allegedly fondled by a man in Portmore, St Catherine. The child was one of at least three victims who have confessed to being sexually assaulted, years apart, by the same man. The accused was attacked by a mob and hospitalised under police guard. The six-year-old’s father expressed shock about the man’s reputed serial history and said that he would have protected his daughter if he had been aware of the neighbour’s antecedents. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

A global coronavirus: Travel bans, face masks, and fear

The novel coronavirus has gone global. What had began as an outbreak in China is now threatening to become a worldwide pandemic, having reached every continent except Antarctica. Since it was first identified in mid-December, the virus has killed more than 2,800 worldwide. Though the vast majority of those deaths have occurred in Hubei, the province at the center of the initial outbreak, new clusters are fast expanding outside of China, in countries as diverse as Iran, Italy and South Korea. In the past week alone, 20 countries confirmed their first cases of the coronavirus, mostly in Europe and the Middle East. On Wednesday, for the first time, there were more cases reported outside China that inside, according to data from the World Health Organization. Read more here

Climate campaigners win Heathrow expansion case

Heathrow Airport's controversial plans to build a third runway have been thrown into doubt after a court ruling. The government's Heathrow's expansion decision was unlawful because it did not take climate commitments into account, the Court of Appeal said. Heathrow said it would challenge the decision, but the government has not lodged an appeal. The judges said that in future, a third runway could go ahead, as long as it fits with the UK's climate policy. The case was brought by environmental groups, councils and the Mayor of London. Read more here

27th February 2020

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