By Jada Loutoo
Thursday, April 16 2009
newsday.co.tt
CHILD rights activist Verna St Rose Greaves yesterday chose to take her lobby outside the Hyatt Regency, instead of attending the Civil Society forum, which was taking place metres from where she held her one-person demonstration, outside the Carnival Victory cruise ship.
She wore a white dress, splashed with red dye to represent blood and carried a poster which read “Shame on a Nation. You neglect children, women, poor, homeless, communities in need, persons with disabilities.” On the poster were photos of Akiel Chambers and Amy Emily Annamunthodo, both victims of murder. Ringing a brass bell and shouting at the top of her voice, a barefooted St Rose Greaves said she chose the public place to speak out against what she called the injustice being done to the children in the country.
Continue reading Activist takes to the streets
I wish to bring to the attention of civic society that First Citizens Bank (FCB) is exploiting former CIB depositors, most of whom are senior citizens. FCB is holding us to ransom although the State has made tax-payers money available to finance the bail-out or the buy-out and made public guarantees to assuage and allay the fears of CIB customers.
It seems that every expert testimony given so far to the Uff Commission of Inquiry has revealed mismanagement, technical incompetence and, perhaps, deep-rooted corruption.
There is clearly a link between the findings contained in the February 20 report presented by Gerry McCaffrey, construction expert hired by the Uff Commission of Inquiry that the structural steel work at the Brian Lara Stadium project “is effectively condemned” and the cancelling of his return flight to Trinidad on February 27 by the Office of the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning has been trying effortlessly to convince Trinidadians and Tobagonians that the Fifth Summit Of The Americas will bring them great prosperity ‘in all areas of our economy.’ This claim is being met with overwhelming skepticism throughout the country as the Prime Minister and his administration has become notorious for false promises, consistently failing, and short sighted policies in all areas of our economy.
During the RIC hearings that subsequently resulted in the current electricity rate hike I made it abundantly clear that the net effect of the proposed unit rate increase from 15 cents to 35 cents per unit would result in a 45% hike in electricity bills. T&TEC and the RIC under Professor Dennis Pantin used every statistical trick in the book to deny and discredit this percentage increase.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) defines child labour as work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. Such work is considered harmful to the child and should therefore be eliminated. There remains no official statistics on the magnitude of child labour in T&T. However, rapid assessment studies conducted by the International Labour Organisation, (ILO), in 2002, uncovered some alarming facts.
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