Tag Archives: Colm Imbert

“The real problem is that oil dollars have reduced us all to ‘petro-jumbies’, a people who have never explored our creativity, our talents, our potential. “For generations, we have been lazy slobs, knowing that the oil dollar, down today but up tomorrow, will rescue us from ruin, cushion fuel prices, …

“[…] The PS suggested that the powers-that-be were hell-bent on adopting this most unsuitable legislation to please a very well-meaning, vocal, but uninformed interest group. “[…] He lamented the apparent absence of a thorough, comprehensive and detailed analysis by the relevant business organisations/interests, especially in the small and micro sub-sector. It …

More than half our population did not experience the ravages of the 1988 International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) intervention. This group likely does not pay attention to the news reports on the Article IV consultations. They do not know that the Public Services Association’s 1988 membership was savaged and subsidies were …

After listening to Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s 2023 budget presentation last September, I felt a certain disquiet that I have not been able to deal with satisfactorily. Something did not feel right about what he was telling the country but precisely what it was kept eluding me. Contemplating the performance …

What a week! The events that tumbled over each other added to the exhaustion and frustration of the long road from 2020. Do we, as a country, have a clear path to success? Let us consider a few of the incidents. Firstly, the THA’s Chief Secretary announced that he and …

“[…] Many [health care workers] are working under short term contracts—some as short as three months—[and] have been subjected to continual rollovers of their short term contracts and who have been employed continuously for 15 years and more. “[…] Instead of abolishing the short term-rollover contract system, coming up with …

“Words are the clothes thoughts wear” — Samuel Beckett, Irish writer. The Budget debate and its fallout sent me scurrying to recall Beckett’s writings. He is the author of “Waiting for Godot”—a play the late James Lee Wah introduced to me in the early 70s.  The state of play on …

Harvard Business Review (April 2019) warned that perfectionism is a double-edged sword that can either motivate you to deliver high-quality work or cause you much anxiety and slow you down.  Are we witnessing this play out with the many iterations of the procurement legislation saga, or is it something else? …

“[…] During the Petrotrin shutdown saga, the OWTU actually offered to take a 15% wage cut in order to save jobs. The result? All, all, all workers were sent home. “The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) settled with TSTT for 5% over a five-year period 2014–2019. How many jobs were saved? …

“[…] The mantra of those in authority, who are now offering public sector workers a meagre 2% over an eight-year period, was repeated time after time: ‘We are all in this together.’ “But I wish to remind them of a famous quote which says this: ‘We are not all in …

Public transportation is a quality-of-life issue. Sometime in 2015, this statement caught my attention and gave me hope that Trinidad and Tobago was finally beginning to take action to bring our country out of the doldrums of the 20th Century. Seven years later, transportation continues to be chaotic, dangerous, and …

“[…] Minister Colm Imbert said that the $1 increase is so that the burden of adjustment can be equally shared between the Government and people. This is utter rubbish.  “The real issue is how is the burden of adjustment to be shared between the rich and the poor—between those who …