The 22-member team of government members, businessmen, economists and activists is chaired by Prime Minister Keith Rowley. It is tasked with the responsibility of creating a COVID-19 Roadmap to Recovery for Trinidad and Tobago.
The team has issued a call to all citizens to let their voices be heard by submitting their views on the way forward for T&T.
Continue reading ‘Roadmap to Recovery’ team invites public to make submissions
By Raffique Shah
May 4, 2020
Memo 02 to the post-COVID-19 Recovery Team: Gentlemen, and the few ladies among you, greetings. I have chosen to communicate with you in full glare of the public because I do not wish to be seen as saying and doing nothing when my country needed every citizen to contribute what he or she could in the aftermath of a disaster such as the world has never experienced.
Continue reading Memo 02 to Team Recovery: Freeze motor imports
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 4, 2020
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.”
—James 1:5 KJV
Fifty eight years ago Eric Williams (PNM) and Rudranath Capildeo (DLP/UNC) went to Marlborough House to discuss the path forward to create an independent nation. Williams was determined to take the country into independence while Capildeo wanted to make sure that Afro-Trinbagonians, the majority group, did not discriminate against Indo-Trinbagonians. Subsuming their party interests to the national interest, they inscribed a minority platform into the country’s constitution that protected the rights of Indo-Trinbagonians and other ethnic groups.
Continue reading Re-charting our Ruins
By Raffique Shah
April 27, 2020
My younger brother Farouk caught me unawares one evening last week when he telephoned me saying, “The PM used the ‘F’ word today!” “What?” I asked in shock, thinking that either Prime Minister Keith Rowley or Farouk was going off. “He did!” Farouk persisted. “He spoke about food.” The joke was on me, and we enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense.
Continue reading Hungry people, angry people
By Stephen Kangal
April 26, 2020
A third Road Multi-Sectoral and micro and macro conceptualised Map is now being engineered and brainstormed by the PNM Government. Both the previous 2020 and 2030 Vision Road Maps were shelved because the PNM is politically notorious for conceptualization plans but total failures when it comes to critical implementation commitments.
Continue reading A COVID Recovery Road Map with Too Many Junctions
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 22, 2019
All you guys have done is reference to us getting jobs. I do not want a job. I want change, I want a future….You are ignoring our future….What are you doing to give us a voice?
—Stefan Lander, student, St. Mary’s College
To hear Colm Imbert, Minister of Finance, tell it, the 2020 budget has nothing to do with the upcoming local elections or the 2020 general elections. It emanated from the government’s genuine interest in the welfare of our people.
The words had barely come out of Imbert’s mouth when Rohan Sinanan, PNM’s campaign manager, declared: “I am very pleased; I think my job as campaign manager was made significantly easier with a wonderful budget” (Express, October 10).
Continue reading Mobilizing Our Social & Cultural Capital
By Raffique Shah
October 16, 2019
Some day last week, after I had eaten a very modest lunch, I was snacking on a few locally-manufactured crackers when my wife asked, “You still hungry, nah?” She has noted with unnecessary concern that I eat smaller portions, which I attribute to ageing and my now mostly sedentary lifestyle, the latter imposed on me by my infirmity. I don’t need calories that I won’t burn as I did during my very active pre-Parkinson’s life. That reality notwithstanding, the urge to snack on junk remains undiminished, much to my dismay.
Continue reading Greed is killing us not so softly
By Raffique Shah
October 07, 2019
It is a newspaper commentator’s dilemma—having to write on the Finance Minister’s annual budget presentation, as readers expect him to, both before and after the Appropriation Bill is laid in Parliament. This becomes even more challenging when the package covers the year leading to a general election when the Government, and here I mean any government, engages in distributing largesse like the proverbial “parsad” at “pujas”, throwing goodies at the electorate with the expectation that they will yield votes.
Continue reading Budget biggest ‘bag’ thieves lay their hands on
By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2019
I had planned to write a column sometime before the 2019-2020 Budget presentation on the successor-companies to State-owned oil giant Petrotrin, seeking to have the Minister of Energy and/or Corporation Sole (the Minister of Finance) inform the public of their progress or regress or stagnation. I thought that in the spirit of transparency, especially after citizens were stunned when we were told in 2017 or thereabout that the one-time pillar of the national economy was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and mired in multi-billion-dollar debts, we the public should know early o’clock if the new enterprises were faring any better.
Continue reading Oil in turmoil
By Raffique Shah
August 14, 2019
It’s so easy for us to be so overwhelmed by our own mess—and there’s more than enough sewage there to drown us all—that we are unmindful of what’s happening in the wider world, developments that could impact our small island state negatively.
When the fallout from certain actions by powerful leaders hit us in the face with a bang, we will come awake startled, crying out: Oh Jeezanages! I was watching Marlene McDonald and her gang…ah didn’t see that bolt from Donald Trump (or Xi Jinping or Boris Johnson or Vladimir Putin) coming this way!
Continue reading Turmoil in the global village