PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Trinidad and Tobago should not need the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to admonish this country about the dangers to good government and to democracy posed by political funding. Miguel Insulza has been the latest high official to mount a bully pulpit on the subject, addressed to political parties and ruling administrations in the Caribbean.
Trinidad and Tobago
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Former controversial Caribbean Airlines (CAL) chairman George Nicholas says he’s not to blame for the company’s present financial state.
The six-year-old airline, of which Nicholas was the chairman for 16 months, has been in the red for the past three years and has suffered millions in losses and write-offs during the same period.
Nicholas’s response was in a statement of case he filed in the High Court against publisher Maxie Cuffie, for a column Cuffie wrote in the Trinidad Guardian on April 21, 2013 titled “CAL Heads for Another Crash”.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - CAL chairman Rabindra Moonan yesterday defended his board’s decisions in the midst of financial challenges. The six-year-old state company has found itself managing a billion-dollar debt and having to write off millions in losses owing to mismanagement of the company’s cargo revenues and credit card fraud. In a telephone interview with the Express yesterday, Moonan said the board had “settled down” and was trying to take the organisation forward.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Shareholder governments of the regional airline LIAT say the T&T Government’s subsidy to State-owned Caribbean Airlines (CAL) is a violation of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs CARICOM.
Dr Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, speaking at the end of a shareholders’ meeting of LIAT in Barbados, said the subsidy to CAL also violated the Common Air Services Agreement among CARICOM member countries and had resulted in substantial losses to LIAT.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Finance Minister Larry Howai is expected to detail the financial position of the state-owned Caribbean Airlines (CAL) on Tuesday amid media reports that the airline has had to write off millions of dollars in losses owing to mismanagement and credit card fraud. Howai is due to inform the Senate on the airline’s finances over the period January to December 2012.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Debate on the motion of no-confidence against Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the People’s Partnership Government is set for next Monday. Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley who filed the motion, was not prepared to comment on the view that the motion was frivolous. “I will make my case on Monday,” he said, adding that a no-confidence motion was not about defeat or victory but about what is said in the debate.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC –Caribbean Community (CARICOM) foreign ministers Tuesday began two days of discussions here amidst calls for the region to adopt a new paradigm in dealing with a changing global environment. “It is therefore critical that our diplomatic encounters must be able to advance and expand our own political and economic space and we must do so starting right here in the Caribbean,” said the incoming Chairman of the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Affairs (COFCOR), Winston Dookeran.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The extractive sector—the mining, quarrying, dredging, oil and gas extraction industries—plays an important role in the global economic landscape, contributing significantly to the GDP of its host countries. These industries are capable of contributing to the sustainable development of communities and to the wider economy when interventions are implemented, taking into consideration the rights of the people most affected.
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.
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.