PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, (IPS) - Officially, the Caribbean’s rainy season begins in June, coinciding with the start of the hurricane season. But recently, heavy rains have signalled an early start to the rainy season, flooding streets, swelling rivers and causing widespread damage to crops.
“With global warming, you have to expect anything these days,” Shiraz Khan, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Farmers’ Association (TTFA), told IPS.
News
ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Hours after coming under heavy criticism for his remarks on the issue of increased pay for LIAT’s pilots, the airline’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Captain Ian Brunton said the company has not made any decision on the matter.
ST JOHN’S, Antigua – A suggestion that regional carrier LIAT should be put under the umbrella of essential services, has been pegged as a move to deny workers’ right to withdraw their labour when there is a deadlock over a dispute.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - EVERYONE will wait to see what comes out of the meeting which the LIAT shareholder governments said they want to have with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.
It is a meeting that could determine the way forward for the region’s airlines which are facing challenges in relation to operational costs.
The subject of the discussions is a fuel subsidy which LIAT officials have said repeatedly, gives Caribbean Airlines (CAL) some unfair advantage.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - State carrier Caribbean Airlines (CAL) is facing a potential write-off of approximately $200 million in losses, including $60 million lost from what executives say could amount to credit card fraud related to airline ticket purchases.
More than $100 million has already had to be written off from the company’s cargo department.
A report submitted to the CAL board of directors recently stated the losses were incurred because there were no policies in place to ensure the enterprise got its earnings.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Who’s minding the store?
Yesterday, the Sunday Express reported on the millon-dollar write-off at national carrier Caribbean Airlines (CAL) in the midst of the company’s financial turbulence.
Part 2 today considers whether CAL is being run in the best interest of its shareholders, the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, by the people appointed to manage it.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The most troubling thing about the current fuss about free travel at Caribbean Airlines is how familiar it all is. During the many decades of the airline’s previous incarnation as BWIA, flights were plagued with freeloading and flight status abuses, whimsical efforts at pampering wealthy, powerful people who were perfectly capable of paying for their own first-class tickets to any destination to which the airline formerly known as BWee flew.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The time has come for the Corporation Sole as represented by Finance Minister Larry Howai to step in and rescue the public interest from the politics and mismanagement at Caribbean Airlines (CAL). With red ink running across the airline’s balance sheets, Minister Howai needs to invoke his authority as the representative of shareholding taxpayers and assume his responsibility for taking the airline in hand. That he has already allowed so much wrong to continue without acting is unacceptable.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - FORMER DIRECTOR GENERAL of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Dr. Chelston Brathwaite, has called for a new focus on local agriculture that will bring benefits including a reduction in the food import bill.
He said the new vision for agriculture should have a focus on making it an integral part of driving agro-related sectors of the economy, including tourism and others.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The news that our offshore sector was recently severely criticized in the Canadian parliament is one more inconvenient truth that the Barbados economic policymakers will have to face.
In a report earlier this month, the Standing Committee on Finance of that country’s parliament made recommendations to its government on a number of proposals to come down hard on Canadian companies and individuals using this country and other low-tax jurisdictions.