Welcome
to our Virtual Village!! Where would you like to go first?
OWTU SPEAKS AUGUST 31
Happy Independence Day our dear friends, country-men and comrade citizens and welcome to the OWTU Speaks! Since August 21, 1962 there has been no more profound a Prime Ministerial statement than the one made by the First Prime Minister, Dr. The Right Honourable Eric Eustace Williams when he said on that date: “Whatever the challenge that faces you, from whatever quarter, place always first, and above all the national interest and the national cause. The strength of the Nation depends on the strength of the citizens.”
Trinidad and Tobago had just lowered the Union Jack and hoisted our own Red, White and Black and announced to the world the arrival of a nation forged from the love of liberty, committed to ensuring that every creed and race will find comfort in equality, social justice and peace. And Prime Minister Dr. Williams was delivering his first speech as Prime Minister to our new nation on the first day of our independence from Great Britain. There has not been any so inspirational, moving and profound since. What is preached today is really the hollow verbiage of the self righteous and self exalted.
Forty five years after, we have grown a power elite which envisions growth, development and sophistication in monuments and edifices. We abandoned the white massa – or so we thought – until his modern representative wi8th cold heart lectured us in darkness two days ago on the purposeful planning which has produced new Multimillion dollar official residences and other government constructed sky scrapers – and being a foreigner and all that.
The democracy which Dr. Williams admonished us to grow and protect has been stultified by arrogant dictatorship tendencies that have so far been buffered only by the fact that our abundant national earnings allow us to paste the cracks and plaster the sores.
Our responsible and caring government seems dazzled by the glitzes of modern metropolitan skylines and oblivious to the real issues affecting the body politic at ground level.
The national psyche is now “A” for arrogance, “B” for Bobol, “C” for yourself and “D” $100,000 Dinners and discourses with the Putative father. And May God Bless and Save Us.
Be safe. I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAK 2007-08-29
Good evening friends, country-men and comrade, citizens and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks.
The Parliament is as good as place as any for tory to jump out from open mouths except that some mouths do not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that the Parliament is brought into the loop long after man-in-the-street had already moved on to the next talk of the town. Mouth Open-Tory Jump Out! We recall a T&TEC function in 1993 when nearly brand new Chairman of the Board sought to affect a new dimension to the way things ought to be during under his commission at that time. He said ‘whatever we do, we must do right the first time’. One thought that the head of the Commission will be exemplary and not be accused of failure by omission to do right the first time. We are not surprised today about the unethical. Private Company of which that party official is reported to be the owner. It seems that the keepers of the party’s purse will squeeze stones in the street and make a capital profit. He seems to also fit the characteristics of the ‘bagman’ in ‘Bush Whe Whe’. Just in case you did not know the bagman is ‘an insider’ that person who advises and knows the Banker’s mark at each play even as he maintains a close relationship with the punters.
This Home Mortgage Bank transfer to Stone Street Capital is no different from the February 1995 transfer of the T&TEC Pension Plan’s Equity Portfolio to Viveka Holdings Limited. The major character in that insider transaction was common to both businesses then. Monteil as Chairman of the Pension Fund Management Committee and was at the same time a Principal Officer of Viveka Holdings Limited. A special meeting of the Pension Fund Management Committee was summoned and a decision taken to sell the Equity Portfolio there was declaration of an interest by anybody and it is suspected that everybody else except one was either ignorant of their fiduciary responsibility or felt intimidated by the authority of their employer’s chairman.
It seems that every conventional party has its hustlers at levels and also straddling all classes in the society in that a suspected accessory to the 1995 alleged malfeasance is today a regional co-coordinator of sorts for the discredited opposition bunch. When some provocative analysts deemed the PNM and the UNC as side A and side B of the some coin other people steupsed. Now that the bagmen are being identified and paraded as political squares, the analysts’ positions are vindicated but yet the politics are becoming more and more confused. Who to vote for the corrupt whose next egg is stashed abroad or the fiddler who charges $100,000 for dinner? Speaking for myself, I could not afford either of them nor am I inclined to trust them.
Be safe T&T, careful on the roads. Motorists obey the Highway Code and be guided by common sense.
Good evening! I am Errol Mc Leod for O. W. T. U. Speaks.
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS 2007-08-27
Good evening and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks.
Let me first amend my arithmetic on one aspect of the Budget’s fiscal proposals:
Last day I said that the $1 increase on the $9 minimum wage represented a measly adjustment of 0.11% over $9 and 0.001% of a usual $1,00 middle order society fund raiser dinner plate. I was wrong. What I did was transpose my fractions of those two (2) principal numbers without moving my decimal point as I sought to indicate the percentages which they represented. I should have said that the $1 increase on the minimum wage represented 11% of $9 and 0.01% of a $1,000 dinner plate. That now out of the way and I mean only my arithmetical correction we continue to debate Mr. Manning’s Budget:
The 2007/2008 Budget has more to do with winning the next General Elections than being an adjunct to any well-thought out programme for the re-organisation of the national economy and the social development of our people. There seemed an absence of any sound philosophical content underpinning the Budget’s approach to servicing Trinidad and Tobago. The 3 ½ hour presentation the regular and often superfluous banter across the floor excepted lacked enthusiasm and creativity too. The two major opposition interventions pointed to a more interesting approach to development than did the Finance Minister’s presentation and there is little hope that the Government’s benches will provide more than excuses in the debate. One may just perhaps look forward to the Senate doing better but even so the ‘ayes’ in the lower House are more prominent and carry the vote on matters of the Budget. And the Emperor will have his way.
It seems that the troops of the governing party will hear the earlier peals of the bell which the paper in back pocket will signal when they meet next Saturday. The canvassing will start in earnest after that bell is rung. Citizens are advised to question all who solicit your support and that you must put before all else the interest of T&T.
Good Evening! I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU speaks.
**************************************************************************************************
OWTU SPEAKS 2007 08 24
Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks! The news is that inflation has inched back up to very near 8% below which it had fallen two (2) months ago. It is said that food price inflation is the contributor to this situation.
The Exchequer’s 2007/2008 Fiscal Package offers a $1 increase to the minimum wage which affects the living standards – indeed the existence levels – of tens of thousands of citizens who are underemployed in our very well to do commercial and services sector. The employers in the commercial services sector and their representatives have since howled against this measly $1 increase on the $9 which some of them had grudgingly paid their defenseless employees. Many did not and continue to cheat as we speak. Let us do a little arithmetic: A $1 addition to $9 per hour represents an increase of 0.11%. Some of these hapless subsistence wage workers would tell you that the pittances which they are paid hardly afford the passage money that they require to get to go to and from work. The $10 per hour which the Exchequer has now agreed to apply now will represent only 0.001% of the $1,000 which the high fallutin in society had usually paid per plate of fund Raiser Dinners. The employers had traditionally sponsored scores of plates at $1000 per plate on both sides of the traditional fence as the dividers of society raised money to get votes to further the divisions among our people. But $100,000 per plate? Who will afford that? Let us not be surprised! The very scalpers who control the businesses in the commercial services sector and who cheat their workers out of a decent wage are the invitees to the $100,000 per plate fund raiser organized by those whose mission it is to fool the small man while serving the political and economic interests of the affluent and powerful in society. $100,000? Per one plate of dinner? Who can afford that? Who will afford that? The rank and file of the party was given a Jerry – we are sure! Nah, is not race! Is nah race at all. The organizer planned a party or is it dinner – the invitees to which would represent the class to which he truly belongs and that must no doubt be conflicting with the interest of the country’s lower classes.
The planners for big business in the so-called small people Party provoked the ire of the rank and file of the Party. They were stopped in their tracks dressed in their fancy suits and black ties. Oh! How they have been exposed!
They will fool some of the people some of the time but they will not fool all of the people all of the time.
The debate continues!
Have a safe weekend.
I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS 2007-08-22
Good evening and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks.
Our Post Budget People’s Sector Breakfast Forum came off quite successfully yesterday morning. Indeed, it went well beyond the lunch hour. It was hosted jointly by the Co-operative Credit Union League of Trinidad and Tobago Limited and the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union and involved the participation of approximately 350 persons.
The Press and electronic media did little to disseminate the wealth of important information and analyses which were presented at the Forum. One media house identified Dr. Winford James as Mr. Brian Moore President of the Credit Union League. A reporter at the same media house attributed to the O. W. T. U. ‘s President General, a statement that Petrotrin imports 100,000 bbls of crude oil annually. Of course that was a most nonsensical inaccuracy on the past of that reporter. It is my view that too many newspapers can’t read, write or string a couple of phrases properly together to make good sense and grammatically correct sentences, nor do they understand half of the issues they are assigned to cover. It befuddles me that one is recorded on Video and Audio making statements which are muted while the quite-often uninformed and less knowledgeable reporter voices what he/she thought was said. I have had occasion to suggest to one such reporter that he believed he understood what he thought I said but what he heard was not what I meant. He remains very confused and over-awed to this day.
What I said yesterday in relation to Petrotrin is recaptured as follows:
$900(US) of re-engineering and update works are currently taking place at Petrotrin’s
P-a-P Refinery and are no doubt important and critical. But which crude supplies what diet of crude oil will we use to fill out our Refinery .We are currently importing some 100,000 b/d of expensive $70(US) per barrel crude. Indigenous crude production is curtailed at 51,000 bbls/day made up 0f 30,000bbls at Trinmar Operation and 21,000 bbls from the company’s land production. Another 14,00 bbls are purchased from local lease operators and farm-out producers. These together total 65,000 bbls/day of indigenous production which contribute to higher refinery efficiencies and greater economic margins. I said that the Trinmar operations can at this time, contribute another 20,000 bbls and that Petrotrin’s Land, North and East Coast Operation can contribute another 15,000 but for an almost collapsed physical infrastructure caused by managerial neglect. I said that with an effective cost management programme and commitment to national interest Petrotrin can obviate in the very short term, the need to import more than half 50,000 bbls/ day of the volumes that we now import. This will be a tremendous boom to Petrotrin and the national economy. In this scenario we did not even include the 45k or so barrels/ day produced by bptt and which should rightfully be considered to the P-a-P Refinery on terms favourable to the state enterprise sector.
We identified the 15% wage increases to CEPEP, URP and Afforestation workers, the adjustment to Senior Citizen’s Grant and Public Service Retirees’ and NIS Pensions as more than deserved and should even be better. The grudgingly applied $1 increase on the minimum wage is shameful of an Exchanger who boast of a $42B Budget for a population of 1.3m. How low and myopic can a government be to its own when tens of millions even billions are given in incentives to the foreign controllers of our resources.
We continue to examine the 2007/2008 Budget with the eye of the Hawk. Stayed tuned!
Good evening. I am Errol Mc Leod for the O. W. T. U. Speaks.
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS 2007-08-20
Good evening and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks’ on this Rainy Budget Day.
There were heavy showers all around and inside, the House was drenched in silence for such long moments that it seemed forever. They were like the moments before the first hymn was sung at a wake or even those moments before Santa clumbered down the chimney. The many speculations continued quietly. Then, on cue, the Pastor rose and in usual authoritative style and with vocals like that of a young lad at that stage of pubescence when he squealed, growled, grunted and shimmered all in one tone the Pastor delivered his sermon in the most tedious of moralizing discourses. He participated for near three (3) hours while others seemed in slumber land.
And then the time for boss of the chamber to speak had come. He stood up and proclaimed “Honourable Members, the question is that this House be adjourned to Friday August 24 at 10am to consider the Finance Minister’s Budget Presentation and an Appropriation Bill for the Service of Trinidad and Tobago October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008. as many as are of that opinion say ‘aye’ and those of the contrary opinion say ‘nay’ the ‘ayes’ have it! This house now stands adjourned to Friday August 24 at 10am.” That was the Hon. Speaker of the House of Representatives following on the Finance Minister’s presentation of his Budget 2007/2008. We wish to begin our examination of the budget as more immediate response and so our now annual Peoples’ Sector Post Budget Forum will take place tomorrow, August 21 at our Paramount Building Headquarters, 99A Circular Road, San Fernando. This Post Budget Forum begins with breakfast at 7:15am for a contribution of $50. Per person and is jointly hosted with the Co-operative Credit Union League of Trinidad and Tobago Limited.
Venerable Economist, Dr. Eric St Cyr, Director of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies, will lead a panel of presenters who will examine the national economy and the fiscal measures enunciated by the Minister of Finance in his Budget Speech. There will also be an examination of the key areas of Energy and Food and Agriculture. On the face of it the Finance Minister seemed to have given something to all. It is suspected however, that when one looks below the surface, we will see where the lion’s share of our wealth is directed to the MNC Gas producers or to national development!
Whose Budget is it ?
Stay tuned! I am Errol Mc Leod for the O. W. T. U. Speaks.
**************************************************************************************************
OWTU SPEAKS AUGUST 2007 17TH
Good Evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks! Santa comes to town next Monday and he will meet us all awake-bright eyed and prepared to engage him in a most careful examination of the contents of his bag. In these days of questionable Chinese manufacture and falling US standards it is advisable that we scrutinize very closely, the local emperor’s blandishment of imported toys aimed to appease a restive people. Let us be patient and understanding but let us not be fooled. Santa will distribute only so much as his real controllers will allow him and promise as much as would see him first past the post by such margins as would allow him a constitution to move the post. This sounds like serious business – let us be watchful!
Next Monday’s Budget presentation is more than likely to be the inflated bag of promises normally contained in an election Manifesto. There will be extensive analyses, prognostications and arrogation of papal vision and authority but for a lack of a world view and a well understood development perspective – the absence of a sound philosophical basis will be discernible. But let us be hopeful and wish for surprises.
There is an unsettling feeling that more of the state sector has been or is earmarked to be hived-off to the private sector – local and particularly foreign. One suspects that in the package concessions that have already been ceded to the multinationals in the background of the Ryder Scott Gas Audit hysteria – is hidden a few deals for others to exploit our appreciable oil reserves which the state company cannot now produce if it did not invest in infrastructural upgrade to restore the integrity of transfer systems which have been left to deteriorate and collapse due to mismanagement and neglect. And this is just another case of willful dereliction of management duty and responsibility by those in charge as if to emphasize the neo-colonials’ incompetence to superintend our own affairs. The garage sale and surrender of the national family’ jewels are continuing at the fall of some auctioneer’s hammer. And when that day comes if we did not prevent it from occurring – even the emperor will be made to pay a rent for the chair and the space over which we once held ownership. It ought not to be allowed!
We look forward to the Exchequer’s many dispensations next Monday 20th from the august chamber of the Parliament.
Have a safe weekend. Be alert to the bad weather conditions. I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS 2007-08-15
Good evening and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks.
Far from either surprising or disappointing us, the announcement yesterday that Monday August 20 is Budget Day, was in our view, more anti-climactic than hair-raising. The Minister of Finance and Prime Minister in his own unorthodox and ill-contrived style chose another gallery and an audience of indifferent strangers to make his expected politically-ground-shaking master stroke. We think it fell flat. The just concluded conference on the ‘Future Development of the Energy Sector of Trinidad and Tobago’ seemed concentrated only on the Oil and Gas sub-sector and more particularly on Gas and the Ryder Scott Audit which seemed to have sounded some alarm bells.
It is to be expected, we hope that discussions will continue with the involvement of all the key stakeholders on the yet to be considered ‘Development’ aspects of the ‘Wider Energy Sector’. The O. W. T. U. stands ready to be included to play its meaningful role in such national objectives. It must also be noted that the Port-of-Spain Energy Conference was held almost simultaneously with and in the back around of a Petro-Caribe Summit in Caracas. Neither should it go unobserved that the relationship across the borders seem to be going through a ‘cryogenic’ process like the gas which we want from L. N. G. manufacture. In these circumstances, those in charge for the time being ought to be possessed with the best interests of Trinidad and Tobago as paramount. It cannot be any arbitrary yielding or neo-liberal pandering to the excessive demands of the Multinationals for preferential economy of its fair share of revenues earned by the sector.
Nothing is sufficiently attractive to the Transnational Corporations so long as National Governments seem eager to surrender more of our control over our own resources. We hasten to add that this is not proposal to reflect any review and amendment of our existing energy tax regime no at all! What we are reminding ourselves however is that the Oil and Gas Companies outside of the State Sector have demanded changes to the tax regime every year since 1982 to facilitate their Development, Exploration and Workover Programmes. And the more favourable the measures enunciated by the government, the smaller the Oil and Gas Companies’ employees’ numbers have grown year after year. Retrenchment and Voluntary Early Separation Programmes (sometimes not very voluntary) have been the order of the day or of the years since 1989.
On what basis has Dr Pedro Van Meurs of Van Meurs consultants determined that Petrotrin is overstaffed? We are sure that the comparator organization against which he benchmarks Petrotrin is a newer Gulf Coast Company which contracts out and outsources all of its drilling, maintenance, services and supplies functions. Such a comparison is fraught with inequalities and erroneous positionings. Let us look at bptt as an example, bptt is not and should be a natural comparator for Petrotrin. Petrotrin has a refining sector, bptt does not! But it will be erroneous to calculate bptt’s Barrel of Oil to Employee Ratio on the basis of that company’s production/ its less than 1,000 direct employeds. All of those persons employed in bptt’s business whether through contract or agency labour must be counted. Not only that Petrotrin has the potential to produce much more than is now being pumped but is handicapped by a fragile pipe line infrastructure which is the result of management neglect. Moreover, we will contend that Petrotrin is over managed and underled. It is perhaps inappropriately manned. It is not overstaffed!
I am Errol Mc Leod for the O. W. T. U. Speaks. Have a safe evening.
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS 2007-08-13
Good evening and welcome to frank talk and independent comment welcome to O.W.T.U speaks
The national community may rest assured that our Carnival, Pan, Kaisoca and Chutney will never run out and that we will not find any empirically sound mathematical rate of depletion of these cultural treasures. The same could not be said for Oil and Gas though! These are finite they are not infinitesimal. If we did not explore and prove up new reserves while continuing our present rate of production, we will become fully depleted sooner. Even with new discoveries however large at any rate of utilisation, there will come the day when our oil and gas will be no more. The most sustainably beneficial monetising of these resources must therefore be where we put our emphasis in our development planning.
Those who now speak and who seem to pontificate so authoritatively, sound more panicky and querulous than those whom they wish to appease. Or might it be that the politician’s infectious fright is precipitated by the inexperienced geologist’s perception that Trinidad’s geological graveyard is really a cemetery where the dead and politically morbid refuse to rest. However inaccurate the1905 assessment may have been, common sense will suggest that any wasting asset will be of a smaller quantity in 1969, than the volumes of an earlier period and so in 2007 there must be a more depleted reservoir of oil than that ever which Texaco, Shell and BP superintended in 1969. Indeed, the 1905 story was based on incomplete data and much negative speculation it was based on the probability that at the rate of extraction and the long period over which it had taken place, the possibility existed that the life of the oil and gas reservoirs was about to expire.
The Ryder Scott gas audit would essentially have examined the books or do we say the reservoir! At the last audit round the reservoir was found to have a proven quantity of gas identified as ‘X’ with an outflow of ‘Y’ rate per day. On the basis therefore of simple arithmetical calculations, the Consultant has determined that should these be no addition to the quantity ‘X’, at a rate of usage of ‘Y’, ‘X’ will become exhausted by 2019 a mere 12 years from today. The trillions cubic feet of gas in the probable and possible columns are no assurance as to our future supply capabilities. It is the proven that is bankable the provable and possible are essentially extrapolations which are based on limited data and risky guessing.
What is to be done? The popularity contest that has become the most essential ingredient in our politics and campaign for office must forthwith be abandoned to give way to a truly national planning for development perspective. If anything in this regard comes out of the two (2) day Energy Conference currently taking place at Hilton Trinidad, we would have done well Trinidad and Tobago does not have to be the world’s most industrialised country per square kilometer to acquire developed nation status.
The foreign energy companies with deep pockets are the entities who will call the shots in formulating the exploration programmes which are inevitable if new gas is to be roved up for the foreign investors who wish to put down their energy guzzling plants here. Their objective is to ensure even deeper pockets for themselves at the expense of the sustainable development of Trinidad and Tobago. These comments too we know are only a scratch on the surface of this economic life or death issue. Much more will be said as we traverse our communities with our public Meetings and People’s Assemblies to inform, educate and reinstate conscience and consciousness in the ordinary folk of Trinidad and Tobago.
I am Errol Mc Leod for the O. W. T. U. Speaks. Have a safe evening.
**************************************************************************************************
O. W. T. U. SPEAKS. 2007-08-08
Good evening and welcome to O. W. T. U. Speaks.
We too, condemn out of hand and unreservedly, the highly provocative act of vandalism perpetrated against the Sewdass Sadhu Temple at Waterloo and the very obvious attempt at fanning the flames of religious conflict in the country. Our law enforcement officers must spare no effort to apprehend the culprits and bring them to justice. It is dangerous to be speculative in matters of this nature due particularly to sensitivities that may be affected but it is also tempting to examine the contradictions in some positions preferred as being possible bases for that serious criminal act of vandalism.
If the motive of the perpetrators were not robbery, nothing was stolen and the objective seemed to be only a desecration of holy place of worship the assault is no less criminal than it is religious bigotry. And who should want to divide our national community any more than the demagogic who has arrogated unto himself the divine right to sit at the head of his part of the divide and be worshipped as a demigod? Given the extent of this society’s degeneration given the extent to which scampishness is now disguised in cloaks of respectability given the brass that has now totally replaced shamefacedness from our physiognomies the ‘agent provocateurs’ of religious strife could well be coming from any quarter of our troubled ‘body politic’.
Efforts all efforts at bringing similar or diverse people together may be considered political action. The converse is the same all attempts to divide and separate people along whichever lines race or religion may also be considered political action. Aye and listen ‘do you remember the long time quip about goat droppings on the hill waiting for a breeze to blow?’ One wonders whether the faithful are being admonished to regroup in their traditional camp and not be drawn to another by promises of moral rectitude and newness. One also thought that we may have politicians who are with certain characteristics similar to those of ancient soldiers who on returning home from the battlefront, used to shoot themselves in their legs and feet so as to win sympathy and compensation. It is sad! And the scamps and vermin are not about sanctity and respect nor love and unity- they are sick and are beyond redemption whoever they may be.
We cannot over emphasize that those who are responsible for the commission of the dastardly act on the Hindu Temple must be resolutely pursued, apprehended and swiftly prosecuted within the framework of law. No stone must be left unturned. We must be wary of agent provocateurs who may be taking opportunity to exacerbate a political system which promotes the division of our citizenry by race, religion, party affiliation and geography to the point where a total fracture becomes the reality. Let every creed, let every race be comfortable and at peace, with justice and equity in our still beautiful Trinidad and Tobago. I am Errol Mc Leod for the O. W. T. U. Speaks.
********************************************************************************************
OWTU SPEAKS 2007 AUGUST 03
Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks. Did we hear some talk about school children being abused in the context of teachers being absent and or engaging in protest activity?
Were there criticisms of teachers and parents too against their engaging innocent children in protest demonstrations? And, have we heard moralists of recent vintage bewailing the sin of gambling and condemning the presence of school children in the queues of Play When punters? If we are to take seriously the admonition of those who voice such criticisms and issue such edicts won’t we naturally look to them for exemplary behaviour and leadership? Or are they just being imperial in their methods which include that “you do as I say and not as I do?” How does one explain the abuse of innocence of the enthusiastic but unknowing top SEA qualifier by the opportunism of an unthinking politician? That child should never have been presented on anybody’s political platform! Such exposure of that minor can be construed as no less an abuse of innocence than an adult – teacher or parent pushing a child in front holding up a placard or poster which offends established authority.
Couldn’t the child have been toasted at a function organized by the government – not the party – indeed, there is and must be, a very distinct demarcation between party and state – party and government. Couldn’t the child have been toasted at a government sponsored activity and lifted up as an example of progressive development which other children are invited to emulate?
It seems a case of the sometimes unthinking anti-gambling crusader taking chances jumping the rubicon between that which between that which is PNM Party on the one understanding and Government of Trinidad and Tobago on the other. It must never happen again! Kissing babies on Party walkabouts is to be kept separate and distinct from our national identification of achievers who have emerged as beneficiaries of programmes built on natural resources. The Prime Minister ought to know better and must be expected to do better. There must be no gambling with important notwithstanding some tarnished character’s advocacy that ‘politics has a morality of its own.’
Just as a matter of public interest now – the rainy season is well upon us and our physical infrastructure is again being tested. Sewer trunk lines are giving way due to a lack of maintenance and repair and now saturated and heavy ground – some streets and residences in the south are flooded with sewage – some drains are overflowing and rivers are bursting their banks – some roads are impassable. These problems – and they are but few – these problems do not discriminate between nor among us – we are all inconvenienced and suffer by them.
May we come together in common cause and purpose to make this a better place supported by all, supporting all?
Watch it on the roads now!
Avoid the bad drive!
Remember – ‘Accidents do not just happen, they are caused!’
And lastly, the short cut is often the wrong cut!
Have a safe weekend.
I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!