Guest Columns

Will the recently announced Board of Management of the Children’s Authority be able to rise to the challenge of resolving the many problems that have plagued the organisation over its two years of operation? SHEILA RAMPERSAD concludes her investigation into whether the Authority is fulfilling its promise. Among the Authority’s …

In the year of our Lord 2017, when we routinely hand money to indiscernible faces behind tinted windows—at places ranging from the gas station to a government office—spend thousands in online transactions with no personal interaction whatsoever or troubleshoot complex issues over the phone with people we will never meet; …

At the end of two turbulent years of existence, the Children’s Authority was shaken by the launch of an investigation into the questionable decision taken by Director Safiya Noel to “adopt” without observing the normal protocols a teenage boy who had been assigned to the Authority’s care. SHEILA RAMPERSAD continues …

Operationalised in May 2015, the Children’s Authority marks its second anniversary this month. SHEILA RAMPERSAD has been looking at what impact it had in confronting the bogey of child abuse and whether returns match expenditure. This is the first installment of a three-part series. Parts Two and Three will be …

Once in a store in Canada, I saw a sign that read, “Customer service is not a department…it’s an attitude.” In Trinidad and Tobago, we have a serious problem as it relates to the attitudes of people who have to deal with customers and clients. For years, people have complained …

Recently, a series of videos have been making the rounds showing young people in school uniforms, many of them young ladies, engaged in fights. One fight is hardly out of our minds before another imprints itself on it, complementing—if that is the appropriate word—the repugnant images of girls kicking, punching, …

“Once the UN does make the necessary adjustment, the floodgates will open and the rest of the world—including major bandwaggonists Trinidad and Tobago—will all of a sudden see this as a non-issue. So if we take the risk now, where, realistically, in the Western Hemisphere would the diplomatic backlash come …

So once again we’ve made international news…And again for reasons we rather we didn’t make de people international news. I mean we crave foreign acknowledgement and validation, but not so, dred. Bright and early Thursday morning, I see on my newsfeed an Al Jazeera story exploring why tiny T&T have …

For the record, I’m no telecommunications expert. That said, we learned of a government minister who racked up a phone bill to the tune of $59,059 in a matter of four days, from 29 January to 3 February.  In her attempt to justify the wanton expenditure, we were informed that …

“If we were to go all the way and legalise marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes, think about the effects it could have on boosting and differentiating our basically still-born tourism product… The potential to revitalise the local economies of rural villages hardest hit by our recession is obvious. …

Hear ye, hear ye, O people of the babagreen—I cyar really say “grassroots” no more since in most places the grass cut and covered over with Bestcrete or pitch. Anyway, leh mih make mih point. The point is that ting happening and, Sherma Wilson, forgive me for calling your name …

“The Media, at least the traditional mainstream part of it, is not a clear glass window, giving an unobstructed view into the society; it is rather, a lens. It can serve to focus and direct public attention to specific areas of national life and equally, to obscure or obfuscate other …