Dr. Kwame Nantambu
August 22, 2007
Now that the TT $42.2b 2007-08 budget has been presented to the citizenry of TnT, the casual, albeit non-political observer is only forced to conclude that it was a budgetary exercise in futility on the heels of a general election.
Indeed, “the Arithmetic of the budget” suggests that the 5,000 plus workers of the Community Environment Protection Enhancement Program (CEPEP) and their families, the 26,000 new home owners and their families, and by extension, government ministers and their families are the only electoral entities who should vote for the PNM.
Continue reading Budgetary exercise in futility
The Sugar Cane Industry is now proving to be economically viable. But Government will not help the farmers (The Sugar Cane Co-operative) in their current proposals/ collaboration with a French Company because it will show PNM’s foolishness, lack of foresight and politically motivated spite. 
One expected something new and refreshing when Winston Dookeran entered the political area and announced that “new politics” were the order of the day. In his attempt to offer an alternative to the PNM and UNC one felt that there would have been a stricter adherence to decency and truth and that he would have tried to lift the political discourse to a “higher” level. But, as the French says, the more things change, the more they remain the same; the newer the politics, the more repulsive is its contents.
With the spectre of a relatively early end to Trinidad and Tobago’s natural gas reserves haunting the country following on the publication of a report which declared that gas reserves in TT would last for a mere 12 years, Government should lobby for the forming of a natural gas equivalent of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with the immediate accent on an optimum price or system of taxation for the fast depleting asset.
The government’s intention to develop Laventille though politically tactical is also vitally necessary if the social ills of this area are to be alleviated. Not only does this make economic sense but strategic investments in troubled communities are a sure way to address the social evils which has historically plagued communities where poverty rules supreme. Progressive social thinkers supported by statistics, shows that crime thrives where hope is stifled. Survival has always been the law of the jungle whether literally or metaphorically speaking.
DEVANT MAHARAJ, a senior employee of the National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB) has won another court battle relating to his job.