Vicki Assevero, founder of the Green Market, Santa Cruz, makes an important distinction between different types of interest in her Letter to the Editor about the Chaguaramas peninsula: The Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) has requested expressions of interest for “planning, design, construction and commissioning of a full service hotel at …
Read More »Bush Diary 2: A camera man, a producer and a presenter walk into a forest…
Paolo Kernahan, fresh from completing the second Bush Diary DVD, suggests we take a closer look at our natural environment: Three men, loaded like mules with camera equipment and supplies, stand at the forest’s edge. The romanticism of producing a local nature documentary series in Trinidad and Tobago got them …
Read More »Planting the garden wrong: Daly frets over T&T’s bitter cassava as values go astray
The instability, corruption and favouritism—as well as enduring shade, class and foreign preference—and just plain, but twisted, foolishness have become so overwhelming that I have been unable to write about some of my favourite things that reflect the resources capable of making Trinidad and Tobago a happier place. I had …
Read More »Dear Editor: How to reform Port of Spain in 22 steps
“Create legislation to tackle food waste, convert vacant lots to green spaces, modernise the Central Market, acquire or repurpose abandoned buildings, close the QPS entrance/exit opposite Dundonald Street… partner with businesses to provide free WiFi!” The following Letter to Editor with 22 steps to reform Port of Spain was submitted …
Read More »The Colm after the storm; and Imbert’s about-turn on the gas subsidy
Minister of Finance Colm Imbert was interviewed by Khamal Georges on CNC3 last week and it was difficult not to be genuinely impressed by his calm demeanour. It contrasted sharply with the agitation and irritation he displayed during his mid-year review in Parliament a week prior, when he announced to the …
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 »Ageing in this cussed country: Raffique Shah on how T&T treats senior citizens
In a few months, I shall cross another threshold of ageing, scoring seventy years of life and officially transitioning into the status of “old geezer.” The dawning of a new year set me thinking about the past and the future, although I know I have fewer years ahead of me …
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 »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 »Nature takes its course at Asa Wright
The Energy Ministry’s Permanent Secretary yesterday ordered a halt to quarrying at the Asa Wright Nature Centre (AWNC) after a media barrage on the issue. Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine visited Asa Wright on Friday—at the request of the latter party—but did nothing all weekend or on Monday when the frustrated …
Read More »Environmentalist doesn’t appeal to PM
UWI lecturer and environmentalist Wayne Kublalsingh took a large gathering of concerned citizens to the PM’s private residence to “appeal to her sensibility, to her intelligence, her scientific sense and her logic” in relation to the route of the $7.5 billion Point Fortin Highway. Kublalsingh and his entourage left without …
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