By Raffique Shah
Sunday, March 22nd 2009
I understand and can excuse the average citizen’s call for Government to cancel hosting the Fifth Summit of the Americas (SOA), and later this year, the Commonwealth Heads’ (CHOGM) meeting. After all, most ordinary people will have noted these conferences mere months ago, when Government alluded to them, to their costs, and what the country hoped to gain by hosting half of the world’s heads of governments (when both meetings are combined). The man-in-the-street would think Prime Minister Patrick Manning awoke one morning last year, and while still in a daze, took the billion-dollar decision up St Ann’s way.
Continue reading Food pact from Summit
FOR too many years we have haggled over what the minimum wage should be in this country: should we pay the poor buggers $9 an hour, or $10? That would amount to less than $2,000 a month, but it’s worth fighting over. For those trapped in this gloomy underworld-not so hidden, since we shop at groceries and stores where they labour every day-it could mean being able to afford an extra “doubles” for lunch, or buying their children the toys they so covet. As far as I am concerned, what we call a minimum wage is in fact starvation wage, a kind of semi-slavery endured only by those who have no other options, except perhaps to turn to crime.
It is patently clear to me that had not CL Financial magnate Lawrence Duprey made his pre-emptive approach to Government in mid-January to mobilize State injection of liquidity into his cash-strapped investment bank, CIB, CMMB and insurance giants CLICO and British American it would have been business as usual to date.
The handing over of prime Caroni lands to selected companies certainly raises cause for concern about the government’s agricultural policy and who benefits from it.