PM: No Action Against Anil Roberts

Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Anil Roberts
Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Anil Roberts

Official statement from: Kamla Persad-Bissessar, SC, MP
Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago

June 12th 2014

PM: No action against Minister Anil Roberts at this time

There has been a clamour in some quarters for me to have taken immediate action in relation to allegations made against Minister of Sport, Anil Roberts.
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TAKE BACK $34M

By Newsday Reporter
June 12, 2014 – newsday.co.tt

BanditTHERE IS to be swift action to recover the $34 million paid to a contractor in the Life Sport programme for work that was never delivered.

The money, paid to carry out Math, English and Modern Technology studies with a focus on numeracy and literacy, was issued in two tranches of $17 million each last year but there is yet to be a stick of chalk or blackboard as proof of this.
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NJAC leader concerned over extent of corruption in TT

By Cecily Asson
May 17, 2011 – newsday.co.tt

National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) leader Makandal DaagaPOLITICAL leader of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), Ambassador Makandal Daaga, has expressed concern over the level of corruption that continues to play out itself in the country.

Speaking on Saturday at the founding congress of the Movement of Social Justice (MSJ) at Palms Club San Fernando, Dagga called on the government to “open our jail doors, and just pack them in.”
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Dance Macabre in the COP

By Raffique Shah
June 08, 2014

Raffique ShahI suppose the Congress of the People (COP), born a robust, bouncing baby in 2007, died of greed rather than malnutrition in the aftermath of the 2010 general elections, so there is little to mourn today as its corpse twitches in delayed rigor mortis, signs of life that are really spasms of death.

How else must one interpret the feast of vultures we are witnessing today, a kind of dance macabre in which those who suffocated the healthy infant in the ample but noxious bosom of big-mama United National Congress (UNC), pretend to be architects of the party’s afterlife?
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British High Commissioner: Media making pornography out of crime

By Geisha Kowlessar
June 04, 2014 – guardian.co.tt

British High Commissioner Arthur SnellThe media in T&T could be a voice for change but instead they make pornography out of crime, says British High Commissioner Arthur Snell. Snell, a member of the Rotary Club, was delivering the feature address at the club’s luncheon at Goodwill Industries, Fitz Blackman Drive, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. Focusing on the topic, Taking Responsibility, Snell also zeroed in on the issue of childhood.
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Sat’s public servants comment upsets Dumas

PM must say if she agrees

By Richard Lord
June 02, 2014 – guardian.co.tt

Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, Satnarayan MaharajFormer head of the public service, Reginald Dumas, is taking issue with a claim by the secretary general of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, Satnarayan Maharaj, that generations of People’s National Movement (PNM) supporters were planted in the public service to prevent any non-PNM government from getting a second term. Maharaj made the claim during an Indian Arrival Day function hosted by the Maha Sabha in Debe on Friday.
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Fanning the race flames

By Raffique Shah
June 01, 2014

Raffique ShahThe persons who orchestrated the racist placards that triggered a furore that lingers long after the protest-dust has settled do not belong to any “lunatic fringe”, as some politicians suggest.

They are perfectly sane, albeit devilishly motivated in their evil designs. Anyone with a modicum of sense could discern that the pro-Rowley placards were intended to have the extreme opposite effect—cast the PNM leader as a bigot, as being anti-Indian to the extent that he would display his venom openly, outside Parliament to boot.
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Happy Indian Arrival Day: Documenting Indian/Trinibagonian History

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 01, 2014

Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe“A child is as much wronged by being left uneducated as it is by being left unfed.” Antoine Fortune, Public Opinion, October 30, 1888.

I endorse Sat Maharaj’s offer of grants of “about $100,000 to local historians who wish to document ‘authentic’ East Indian history in the communities” (Express, May 25). Although I don’t know what Sat means by “authentic” history or what constitutes misrepresented histories “by the children of converts,” I still think his thrust is correct. We need to pay greater attention to our past so that we can better understand our present.
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Whither India?

By Raffique Shah
May 25, 2014

Raffique ShahWith Narendra Modi taking office as Prime Minister of India following a convincing victory in the month-long general elections, the world’s largest parliamentary democracy, India, stands at critical crossroads.

The close to 200 million voters who propelled the controversial Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power comprise in the main Hindu nationalists who see the country as Hindu first, anything else afterwards. But they were not the decisive elements that drove the Indian National Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty out of power in a humiliating rout.
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