After 22 years of passing the buck, the government has failed to pass the Beverage Container Bill which was intended to provide a structure for the collection and safe disposal of beverage containers. Their collective incompetence has facilitated the degradation of our environment, the clogging of our waterways, and litter …
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 »Noble: Wasting a crisis; Le Hunte wanted Cabinet to invest in our future—and they didn’t listen
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before,” Rahm Emanuel, (2008). The context for that quote—which is really a riff off one made by Paul Romer, who in …
Read More »Demming: Fare thee well, Le Hunte; minister’s departure is loss for WASA and T&T
“What is your miracle wish for WASA?” I once asked a former Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) CEO. “To convert my consumers into customers,” was the response. More than 15 years later, another well-wisher bites the dust because of his desire to do the same thing. Both instances occurred under …
Read More »STREET VIBE: T&T still toting over ‘water for all’ promise; Hinds and WASA are no help
I recall some of the many fights I got into as a child growing up in the early 1960s in what was once considered “the country.” Many of these fights occurred near the “standpipe” where we fought over whose turn it was to full our buckets and pitch-oil tins. Those …
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