NEWS
Petrotrin to challenge $74m arbitration award
Petrotrin has another opportunity to resist the enforcement of a $74 million arbitration award to a contractor. In a recent decision, Justices of Appeal Peter Rajkumar and James Aboud allowed Petrotrin’s appeal of a judge’s decision to dismiss its application to have an arbitration award set aside. In their decision, the judges said Justice Ricky Rahim should have first considered Petrotrin’s application before proceeding to Pioneer Construction’s application to have the arbitration award enforced. Read more here
Current owners of pepper spray have 6 months to get permit
Those who already own pepper spray before the new law on this device begins will have six months to seek a permit for it from the police. And the spray may be sold at pharmacies among other places ahead. Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi spoke about these issues in the Senate yesterday, as he piloted an amendment to the Firearms Act to facilitate pepper spray use. Read more here
POLITICS
NGC, Tringen, Yara sign gas deal
The National Gas Company has signed a three-year contract with Tringen, which has two ammonia plants partly owned by ammonia giants, Yara International. The deal will ensure that the two plants would continue their operations, keeping Trinidad and Tobago as a main exporter of ammonia. While the contract is for three years, it will end in 2023, along with all other energy contracts, but it will have a retroactive period to make up for the negotiation time. Read more here
Deyalsingh: UNC must stop undermining vaccination plan
The most important component to reach herd immunity in T&T is for the UNC to stop undermining Government’s vaccination plan, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said in the Senate yesterday. Deyalsingh was answering a question from UNC’s Wade Mark on the timeframe to achieve herd immunity from the virus in T&T. He said that involved vaccinating 600,000 to 700,000 people. However, he said there are three variables. “One is availability of vaccines, which we must have in large numbers, which we’re currently working on to good effect. Two is public confidence in the vaccines,” he said.
BUSINESS
Carnival cancellation hurts WITCO’s bottom line
The absence of Carnival this year is being blamed in part for the West Indies Tobacco Company losing more than $33 million in revenue during the first three months of this year. According to Witco’s unaudited results for the period ended 31 March 2021 revenue was $199.7 million. For the same period last year the revenue was $232.8 million. Witco recorded profit before tax of $128.8 million, for the three month period ended 31st March 2021, representing a decline of $22 million or 14.6 per cent over the corresponding period last year. Read more here
REGIONAL
Golding blasts MoBay bypass exemption but Holness says time running out
Insisting that the Government was on a bad legal footing and accusing the Holness administration of “selling out” the country as it sought to have China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) build the Montego Bay Permit Road Project, Opposition Leader Mark Golding said the order should be withdrawn. The opposition leader argued that for the order to have been valid, the Montego Bay Perimeter Road Project should have been approved by Cabinet and Parliament as a national development project. Read more here
Over 13,000 persons fully immunised against COVID-19
Approximately 157,797 persons within Guyana have already received their first dose of one of the three (Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik V) COVID-19 vaccines, according to Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony.
He made this disclosure during his COVID-19 update with the Department of Public Information (DPI) on Tuesday, May 11. While the number appears to be an impressive one to some, Anthony highlighted that the number still represents only a small proportion of the Guyanese population. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Israel holds all the cards in Jerusalem, yet the city has never been more divided
"Marhaba" -- hello in Arabic -- began the brief text the middle-aged Jerusalem housewife found on her cell phone Monday evening. "You have been identified participating in violent acts at Al Aqsa mosque. You will be held accountable. Israeli Intelligence." The housewife, who lives a few minutes' walk from the mosque, had gone to attend evening prayers. Her age and demeanor discounted the possibility she had joined hundreds of young men who had fought back with rocks and fireworks when Israeli security forces stormed into the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount. Many others received an identical message on their phones, including CNN producer Kareem Khadder, who was also on the Haram al-Sharif. Read more here
Covid: Report finds serious failures in WHO and global response
There were serious failures by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and individual governments in the world's response to the coronavirus pandemic, an independent review has found. The panel established by the WHO called the response a "toxic cocktail". Without urgent change the world will be at the mercy of another disease outbreak, it said. The WHO should have declared the outbreak in China an international emergency earlier, the report said. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response argued that the WHO's Emergency Committee should have acted to do so at its first meeting on 22 January last year instead of waiting until 30 January. Read more here
12th May 2021