Gobin calls for addressing environmental issues at their source, particularly in reducing plastic waste. She also discusses the importance of balancing career and family, emphasizing the need for support networks for working women.
Category: Corporate Social Responsibility
Of porous boarders and Venezuelan babies …
Our history records Trinidad and Tobago’s fisherfolk dodging bullets from or being arrested by Venezuela’s Guardia Nacional for supposedly being in Venezuelan waters. Today we continue to metaphorically dodge different kinds of bullets from our Venezuelan neighbours.
For years, the back-and-forth confrontational posturing was a trickle—the fisherfolk dispute, or the occasional Venezuelan found illegally in T&T. Then came the sustained deluge of illegal Venezuelans seeking a better life.
The most recent ‘bullets’ include the jitters caused some weeks ago by the potential environmental hazard posed by the tilting oil tanker, the Nabarima.
This week, it is the mistreatment of Venezuelan children, both on land and sea. Unless specific action is taken to manage our open borders, it is only a matter of time before Trinidad and Tobago is featured globally in some emblematic photograph of a cross-border disaster involving our Venezuelan neighbours.
Remember the pictures of Kim Phuc the naked 9-year old fleeing the Napalm attack in Vietnam on 8 June 1972? Or the little Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, drowned on a beach in Turkey on 2 September of 2015 while trying to reach shore?
These are not alarmist notions but warnings of possibilities, even as the Minister of National Security claims that the law says they are ‘undesirables’.
There is no question about our inability to absorb unchecked Venezuelan migration but it will continue to happen until our borders are policed and managed, and infrastructure and regulations for humane treatment of refugees and migrants are implemented.
(Copyright Alva Viarruel/AFP 2016/Wired868)
We did well to regularise 15,000 Venezuelan neighbours and it is almost time for their revalidation. But we are not doing well with the treatment of the estimated 16 Venezuelan children whom we have shunted from prison cells to pirogue onto the ocean and then back again.
Even in times of war, there is a commitment to protect the children unless you have ‘Trumpian’ tendencies and feel no empathy for caged children. In the midst of this, the minister of national security was allegedly unaware of the decision to escort a pirogue filled with children (one of whom was just 4 months old)—in the absence of their parents or guardians—into the open sea.
In a completely different aspect of law and order, the population is yet to receive a reasonable explanation of what happened with the DSS (Drug Sou Sou) money which was shunted from the home of the owner to the police station and back again. The common pattern in these two very different incidents is that either there is no rule book or the rules are not being followed.
Either way, it is time for action to be taken. But first we must admit that we are presiding over deep systemic failure of our institutions. It is from this recognition that things are falling apart that we may find the window of opportunity to redesign our systems and re-imagine a different future.
(Copyright TTPS)
The anecdotal evidence is that we are generally welcoming the Venezuelans and trying to accommodate them as fellow human beings. Many are being absorbed because their work ethic is superior to ours, although others have become collateral damage and players in our fast expanding underworld.
The country is at crisis level with the influx of Venezuelans, drugs and guns through our porous borders.
If a solution is not implemented soon it will be a matter of time before a humanitarian disaster catapults us onto the world stage in unfortunate ways.
Trinidad and Tobago has missed opportunities – 1970; 1990; 2000; 2001.
My May 07, 2020 letter to P.M. Rowley.
My final letter in a series of
monthly letters to P.M. Rowley
Dear Prime Minister,
Congratulations on your 56th month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Further congratulations
on your handling of
the Covid 19 pandemic in
Trinidad and Tobago.
Yours for our country!
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Comm
Citizen
My April 07, 2020 letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Congratulations on your 55th month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Mr. Prime Minister, despite your stridency on the campaign trail in 2015, public transportation continues to be chaotic and unreliable. I am taking this opportunity to suggest for the 3rd time that you make Chaguaramas into our first “Bus only” city. This thought was stimulated by the “FluTag” disaster, St. Peter’s Day Celebrations, every Carnival Fete in Chaguaramas and the visual of 2 massive car parks which routinely house the private vehicles owned by members of the Regiment and Coast Guard. The stadium can be used as a car park and regular bus shuttles could operate on time from there. It would require the registration of resident’s vehicles and the issuance of passes.
I sincerely hope that you will at least establish a committee to identify the feasibility of this idea or some other idea which can positively impact transportation in Chaguaramas.
Yours for our country!
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Comm
Citizen
My Sept 7, 2019 letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Dear Dr. Rowley
Congratulations on your 48th month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
More than one year ago you indicated that in 2019 there will be a comprehensive ban on the use of styrofoam products and I wrote asking that single use plastics be included in that initiative.
I am requesting an update on the action plan associated with the implementation of this ban including the status of the legislative agenda.
Yours in the interest of development.
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Communications
Concerned Citizen
My January 7th 2019 letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Dear Dr. Rowley
Congratulations on your 40th month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Here are 12 suggestions for your government for 2018 and I am simply repeating them for 2019 in the hope that you will give this list the positive action it deserves:
- Rationalize our public holidays in order to positively impact productivity.
- Publicize the performance appraisal system for the public service so that citizens know how public servants are judged with regard to performance delivery.
- Appoint a Minister of Communication to ensure that your government’s performance is positively highlighted and brought to the attention of the citizenry.
- Have the Regional Corporations develop and implement a 6 month plan for creating “walkable cities” in their Boroughs starting simultaneously in April 2019.
- Appoint a “Social Innovation Think Tank” to report within 9 months on key social innovations projects which can be implemented across the country.
- Ensure electronic transactions become the norm at Government and State institutions.
- Begin the obesity reduction programme with our protective services especially those in leadership.
- Place a moratorium on the approval of new franchises.
- Mandate Rituals and Starbucks to use 10% local coffee and increase that usage to 60% within 5 years.
- Place a moratorium on the importation of cars. (Effective February 2018, Singapore banned the addition of cars on its roads to reduce the permitted vehicle growth rate to 0%.)
- Implement a programme to ban the use of disposable plastic cups and plates. (In September 2016 France became the first country in the world to ban disposable plastic cups and plates. A new French law will require all disposable tableware to be made from 50% biologically-sourced materials that can be composted at home by January of 2020.)
- Mandate that garbage be separated in homes for collection by specially assigned trucks on specific days.
The country and indeed your government is suffering from inertia and you are in an ideal position to fix this. As your election tag line implored: Let’s do this!”
Yours Respectfully
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Communications
Citizen
My October 7th, 2018 letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Dear Dr. Rowley,
Congratulations on your 37th Month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
You were spot on during your quest for the Prime Ministership when you told our country that transportation is a quality of life issue and encouraged us to dream of a 1-hour commute into the capital city. 37 months later, the commute is worse with its concomitant increase in fuel emissions, time wastage and the enlarging of our carbon footprint.
Here’s a question I suggest you pose to the Board of PTSC:
“How can PTSC double its ridership within 12 months and what non-monetary state support would be required?”
Such a question would force the policy makers to think differently and design strategies from an end user perspective.
Yours Respectfully
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass
Concerned Citizen
My August 7th letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Dear Dr. Rowley
Congratulations on your 35th month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Your government must be commended on the the recent announcement that you have approved a ban on polystyrene foam products by 2019. While this is commendable, this initiative must be expanded to include all “single use” plastics.
Yours Respectfully
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Communications
Citizen
My June 7th, 2018 letter to P.M. Rowley
This is one of the letters which I have written to
Prime Minister Rowley over the past 5 years.
Dear Dr. Rowley
Congratulations on your 33rd month as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
My letters in April and May asked for an update on the establishment of the National Statistical Institute of T&T (NSITT) which I have not yet received. The National Draft Development Strategy 2016/2020 refers to the Reform of the National Statistical System and promised:
“The national statistical system will be reformed to provide timely, reliable and accurate data for improved decision-making and targeted policy formulation. To this end, the National Statistical Institute of Trinidad and Tobago will be established”.
Other information in the public domain suggests that the NSITT is on scheduled to be on stream in 2019 and I am asking for an update on the actual status. Where can a concerned citizen see the work plan and be assured that this matter is on stream? My interest in a well functioning data gathering institution is because I share the soundness of the following statement from your manifesto:
“Our approach to governance in our next term will be data based, scientific, holistic and evidence driven, paying due attention at all times to the need for compassion, sensitivity and the respect for the rights and freedoms of all citizens in all matters of state”.
I am once again requesting a response to my concerns.
Yours Respectfully
Dennise Demming (Mrs.)
MBA, BSc., Cert-Mass Communications
Citizen
Dennise Demming 