“[…] Owners, Operators and Customers of the above businesses are reminded as follows: The consumption of any food or drink and/or in house dining on the premises of the businesses listed above is permitted only if the businesses meet the requirements of the Safe Zone policy as delineated in Regulation 6 of …
Read More »Best: Picking sense out of MoH nonsense; Dr Fuad Khan’s broadside at Piarco Covid system
“This makes no sense,” Dr Fuad Khan thunders at one point in his latest online sermon. “Whoever did this system is a dunce! Is time to get rid ah dese fools in the Ministry of Health.” It’s not easy to decide which set of fools is more wearisome, harder to …
Read More »Demming: Will Imbert’s bottled water move make T&T the Caribbean’s laughing stock?
A friend from up the Caribbean laughed at me on Monday evening and, unable to find any sensible defence, I was terribly embarrassed. Making bottled water exempt from VAT, she remarked with a loud chuckle, is ‘a level of worldliness which only you Trinis understand’. Eight of our Caribbean neighbours …
Read More »Dear Editor: Months of missed opportunities: how Deyalsingh and his experts dropped the ball
“[…] Evidence suggests a very strong link between Covid-19 and obesity. In March 2021, the Independent, Sky News and Reuters published an article which highlighted that 90% of Covid-19 deaths were in countries with high obesity rates (in 2018, T&T was ranked 6th in childhood obesity in the Caribbean at …
Read More »Afra Raymond returns to Nelson Mandela Park and refuses to play ball with National Trust
Supposedly in response to my own post in these pages on 9 September 2021, the National Trust made an engaging and informative post here on 17 September 2021. The most striking aspect of that reply was that the essential query was not addressed at all. For those who have an …
Read More »Tourism Trinidad announces Kurtis Rudd as new CEO, as body seeks to ‘re-energise tourism economy’
Tourism Trinidad formally announced today the appointment of Kurtis Rudd as its new chief executive officer. Rudd, a former Prestige Holdings marketing vice-president, officially started work on Monday 20 September. He replaced acting CEO Heidi Alert, who reverted to her substantive post as manager of destination development. Rudd, a senior lecturer …
Read More »Dear Editor: Charles is wrong, the health minister was obliged to defend T&T on Daily Show
“[…] The minister of health had an obligation to embrace the opportunity to appear on the show, as the matter raised by Ms Minaj had received widespread international coverage both on conventional and social media platforms. “[…] More particularly from a health perspective, T&T’s vaccination programme has been hampered by …
Read More »Noble: Hope is the oxygen of democracy; we cannot afford to let NGOs wither away
One of my saddest memories is of something that happened in 2015 at a village perched high overlooking Port-of-Spain. This village was once a place of joy, where citizens from all over the country flocked to watch the annual fireworks in the Queen’s Park Savannah. However, a nationally infamous gang …
Read More »National Trust chair: We got no Mandela Park proposal, but not every action should be done in public
“[…] As Mr Afra Raymond said, the National Trust is a membership-based organisation and we welcome volunteers in every aspect of heritage protection and awareness. However, not every action can or should be conducted in the full view of the public and I am sure that most persons will appreciate …
Read More »PAHO: Children face significant Covid risk, but countries must do everything ‘to safely reopen schools’
“[…] With each day that children go without in-person schooling, the higher the likelihood that they drop out and never return to school. For some of the most vulnerable children—particularly for our girls—this can have lasting consequences. “Experts agree that the pandemic has triggered the worst educational crisis we have ever seen in the …
Read More »Dear Editor: It’s illegal, under OSHA, to force employees to pay for PCR tests
“Many employers are trying to force workers who have not been vaccinated to take a PCR test… Of course, the expectation is that workers will pay for this—and at anything up to $1,400 a test, it is hardly worth going to work. “You’re not going to work to pay the …
Read More »Afra: Nelson Mandela Park revisited: the curious silence of the National Trust
‘Your silence will not protect you’—Audre Lorde, on the false benefits and toxic consequences earned from calculated or cowardly silences. I had no intention of returning to this issue but Newsday’s Friday 27 August 2021 article (Woodford Square to become heritage site (newsday.co.tt) was a sharp reminder that there is …
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