Panday talks of ‘craziness’ in Parliament on April 5

PORT-OF-SPAIN — Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday has warned of political “craziness” when Trinidad and Tobago’s new post-election Parliament convenes, as expected, on April 5.

He said that his United National Congress- elected MPs have been alerted that every effort would be made to “block” any nominee of the governing People’s National Movement of Prime Minister Patrick Manning from being elected as Speaker.

Panday, who returned at the weekend from a visit to Barbados where he addressed the annual awards ceremony of the Clico (Barbados) Holdings, told reporters: “We are going to take every step necessary to ensure that there is no Speaker and if they (UNC supporters) do not understand it, and they think it’s madness, there is method in the madness.”

Admitting that he had not been officially informed of the convening of Parliament on April 5, Panday said that whenever it takes place, that would be the UNC’s position: “No Speaker, no Parliament; and no Parliament means that the prime minister would be forced to hold fresh elections.”

Panday has reiterated his position that in the absence of an agreement for power-sharing, there must be a return to the electorate to resolve the current 18-18 seats gridlock.

Barbadians in for T&T fishing talks

BRIDGETOWN — An official Barbados delegation was scheduled to leave here yesterday for talks in Trinidad and Tobago on the long outstanding fishing rights dispute between the two Caribbean Community partner states.

The delegation is headed by former Prime Minister Sir Harold St John, who, as an ex-minister of trade and tourism, is viewed as an experienced negotiator.

But there are rumblings of discontent from the Barbados National Union of Fisherfolk Organisations (BARNUFO), whose president, Angela Watson, has complained that the organisation was invited to have one observer on the delegation but would have to pay the relevant cost for the trip.

A vocal critic of the government’s failure to expedite a resolution to the fishing dispute, Watson’s BARNUFO has, within recent months, been strengthening its own relationship with the fisherfolk of Tobago, the fishing ground that is at the centre of the dispute over claimed violations of territorial limits.

Watson said that BARNUFO had to consider whether there was any value in sitting as an observer on the government’s delegation and also noted that the invitation to have just one representative was contrary to 1991 when the association had three representatives for talks in Trinidad and Tobago and the government met the costs involved.

‘Eco-nation’ before ‘eco-tourism’

NASSAU — Before Caribbean Community states, especially those with tourism-dependent economies, start promoting environmentally friendly tourism, they must first focus on the need to develop “eco-nations”.

That at least is the message from one key player in the region’s tourism sector, director-general of tourism in The Bahamas, Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace.

Convinced that “eco-tourism” will only prove meaningul if the people of the society are made aware of the value of promoting a environmentally friendly nation or “eco-nation”, he took that theory earlier this week in speaking of the forthcoming Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism (CMEx).

Vanderpool-Wallace, who is also chairman of the Caribbean Hotels Association’s Government Affairs Committee, lauded the educational goals of the second CMEx scheduled to take place in Nassau from May 16-20.

“Eco-tourism,” he said, “will flourish to the degree that we get our citizens to understand that we have to be people who conserve what we have by behaving in a responsible manner in protecting the environment”.

Barbados hospital ‘a national disgrace’ — health minister

BRIDGETOWN — In the strongest statement yet to come from a health minister in Barbados, the current holder of that portfolio, Dr Jerome Walcott, has described the state-run Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) as “a national disgrace”.

Himself a senior member of the medical profession, who was recently appointed as a Senator to assume the health ministry portfolio, Walcott lashed out at the generally poor condition in which the institution was being kept, in addition to overcrowded wards and delays in patient treatment.

The QEH, once a symbol of pride for Barbadians in comparison to state-run hospitals in other CARICOM countries, has within recent years become a centre for complaints and ridicule.

It is now seen as an institution of industrial disputes, partisan political wranglings, allegations and complaints from patients, nurses and doctors, and where there are also the occasional shooting incidents involving criminal elements.

Speaking in the Senate Monday, Minister Walcott spoke of plans under way to arrest the decay at the QEH with increased financial allocations and new approaches in management.

The minister also took the opportunity to lament what for others is viewed as “the other Barbados”, that segment often lacking in basic sanitary facilities, such as home toilets

According to Walcott, there are some 3,000 households in Barbados without toilets and at least 420 premises where people have to “go next door”, as he put it, to share such facilities.