The Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago is a superior court of record, which gives it a status equivalent to that of the High Court of Justice. It is also a specialized court with its own peculiar jurisdiction and is responsible for the dispensation of social justice. The principal role of …
Read More »Lazy and crooked or overworked and undervalued? The Public Service dilemma
Generally when one is asked to give their opinion on the Public Service and public officers in Trinidad and Tobago the following terms usually come up: lazy, corrupt, red tape, run-around and poor service. Yet is this image fair? My answer would be yes and no. This answer comes from …
Read More »Zig Zag, Zika and severance: How our political system gets it wrong
The currently very serious matters of Zika and the non-availability of severance pay have once again exposed our habit of rarely developing solutions to problems and limiting our energies to combative debate and protest, in the course of which officialdom invariably makes authoritarian pronouncements and tries to take unilateral action. …
Read More »Waste worse than corruption: Raffique Shah points out cost of our nasty ways
A recent World Bank report ranked Trinidad and Tobago as the country that generates the most “municipal solid waste”, on a per capita basis, in the world. Every man, woman and child in this country, on average, every day, generates—according to the World Bank data—a mind-boggling 14.4 kilograms of garbage. …
Read More »Shah: Don’t take Mittal’s mill even for free; how T&T fuelled Lakshmi Mittal
Trinidadians are hell, I tell you. Take their almost instantaneous sympathy with the 600-odd steel workers who found themselves jobless last week when ArcelorMittal shut down its plant in this country. Sure, that means at least 5,000 family members facing very uncertain times if not utter devastation. Those who have …
Read More »Man, mosquito and money: Raffique on Zika war and State spending
Dr Sherene Kalloo launched a broadside yesterday against Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh and his almost jokey war against the Zika virus, pre-empting a column I had already half-written, titled “Man vs Mosquito.” Dr Kalloo argued that Minister Deyalsingh’s declaration of war against Zika and the Aedes Egypti mosquito by deploying …
Read More »Letter to the Editor: Why doesn’t EMA protect residents from noise pollution?
The following Letter to the Editor was sent to Wired868 by Josephine S Aché as a call to arms against noise pollution, which intensifies during the Carnival season: This is an Open Letter to The Air Committee, responsible for the Out In South Fete, held at the SAPA Car Park …
Read More »Sunity: Tackling Health’s special interests is Dr Rowley’s biggest challenge
Within minutes of its appointment, a shot was fired across the bow of the new Health Care Delivery Review Committee reminding us, lest we had forgotten, of the trials of bringing change to the public health sector. In condemning Committee chairman Dr Winston Welch, former Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan …
Read More »Toyota Earth Day: Snakes, bakes and a good Easter morning
The first thing I knew as I walk onto the Toyota compound at Barataria is that there is bake and shark to be had; anyone with a nose would know it immediately. It isn’t the famous Maracas variety which scores of families who have opted to spend the day at …
Read More »Tammy Yates: How I became one of Canada’s top HIV advocates
Ever since I was an embryo in my mother’s womb, I knew that I wanted to work with the United Nations (UN) for three simple reasons. Firstly, I wanted to leave the world in a better way than I found it—cheesy, but still very true. Secondly, I wanted to travel …
Read More »Hwy Re-Route: PM puts greed over T&T environment
The Highway Re-Route Movement claims that Trinidad and Tobago faces an environmental tipping point in the fight to save endangered wetlands: Even as Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was boasting to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday that her Government emphasizes human development and not “concrete, steel and …
Read More »Ebola: How worried should you really be?
2014 has seen more Ebola infections and deaths than any other year in the past. As a mother and a citizen of a country which allows visa-free entry to some affected African nations, how worried should I really be? That’s the question I asked myself when news broke of the infection and subsequent death of …
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