Moontown

SPLIT PEAS AND RICE; SALT FISH RICE

MACARONI PIE; BAKED LAMB; FRIED CHICKEN

BAKED PORK CHOPS; GRILLED BARRACUDA

FRIED RED SNAPPER; LAMB STEW

FISH GRAVY; STEAMED VEGS; SALADS

Antigua Sun

A 23-year-old United Kingdom citizen who brought drugs into Antigua over four months ago, has been convicted and fined $200,000.

Seif Abdulrahman Saleh appeared in the All Saints Magistrates Court yesterday before Senior Magistrate Asquith Riviere.

Saleh was given until 29 July to pay the money or spend a further 12 months in prison, having been on remand since April.

Saleh was charged for possession of cocaine, importation and importation with intent to supply.

He pleaded guilty to the possession charge. The other charges were not put to him.

Reports are customs and officers from the Narcotics Squad found the cocaine in Saleh’s luggage after he arrived at the VC Bird International Airport on Tuesday 31 March about 8:05 a.m.

Saleh came to Antigua on board LIAT flight #521 from St. Maarten, en route to London, expecting to leave the country that same Tuesday night.

Officers from both agencies, acting on information, became suspicious and later conducted a search of the 23-year-old’s luggage, where four sealed plastic bottles containing barbeque sauce were found.

Saleh was taken into police custody and subsequently to Police Headquarters where the bottles were cut open and each was found to contain a sealed package with cocaine.

The packages were weighed and amount to five pounds. Attorney Michael Archibald represented Saleh.

Richard Dodd, chief executive officer LIME Caribbean. - File Richard Dodd, who for 18 months has been at the forefront of the push by Cable & Wireless plc to redefine its regional businesses into a seamless Pan-Caribbean operation under a new name and brand, is stepping down as the boss of LIME Caribbean.

He will be replaced as CEO by his chief operating officer, David Shaw, who will “take up the role after a short handover,” LIME announced Tuesday.

One regional powerhouse

Shaw will continue the work that Dodd, working with Phil Green, began in 2007 to build LIME’s 13-country operations into one regional powerhouse, akin to the model used by banking group FirstCaribbean International Bank, whose multiple markets operate almost like satellites of their Barbados parent.

LIME said Dodd’s reason for resigning was personal.

“Having successfully executed the first phase of the programme, he has decided to return to the UK,” the company said.

His departure comes seven months behind Phil Green, who gave up his job as country manager for Jamaica to be with his family in Indonesia.

Management change

The announcement of the management change comes following disclosures in London that the Caribbean operation was under-performing and that the company was considering new job cuts across the region to offset costs.

Income from fixed-line minutes fell nine per cent in the first quarter, while average revenue per customer declined eight per cent, C&W plc said at its annual general meeting in London on Friday.

It also said the slowdown in business was “intensifying”.

Jamaica, where the transformation has been deepest, reported operating profit of $1.6 billion at yearend March 2009, after restructuring costs of $677 million, and boosted by a $892 million bonanza from pension restructuring.

LIME Jamaica, which had a $5 billion write-off of assets in 2008, cut its net loss from $4 billion to $302 million in the 2009 period.

The Jamaican operation reported growth of 11 per cent in both fixed line and broadband revenue, but an undisclosed decline in mobile income pushed total revenue down by four per cent, from $22.89 billion to $21.99 billion.

Shaw’s focus, coming into office - LIME Caribbean is headquartered in Barbados - is to developing LIME into a “customer-centric business” and to continue the push for a transformation of the culture at the company, whose business includes Internet, mobile and landline phone service.

Lime culture

The culture at LIME has been a holdover of the company’s monopolistic past, and has in the age of competition proved to be a business killer for the telecoms, whose dominance of the market has become part of it history.

LIME’s focus on customer service, the rebranding, and the rebuilding of its regional telecommunications platforms, are meant to woo customers back.

Dodd commended

Tony Rice, the CEO of CWI, the international division of the Cable & Wireless group, and parent company to LIME, commended Dodd for “restoring” LIME’s competitiveness.

The new man to lead the effort, Shaw, “has strong experience” in the telecoms industry as part of the senior executive teams that transformed UK telecoms operator Energis and then Cable & Wireless Worldwide, the UK arm of the Cable & Wireless group.

David “is ideally suited to the task of developing this business and its culture, to put our customers at the centre of everything we do,” Rice said.

Shaw says he has already been working six months with the team he will lead.

lavern.clarke@gleanerjm.com

LIME Jamaica/Cable and Wireless Jamaica corporate headquarters, Carlton Crescent, St Andrew. - Photo by Amitabh Sharma

Holness Education Minister Andrew Holness has signalled the Government’s intention to attack the shift system in schools.

In making his contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament yesterday, Holness said the shift system affects the quality of education and is a manifestation of the need to provide access to education.

“The shift system has a major negative impact on the quality of education,” Holness told Parliament.

There are 154,341 students attending 116 schools that use the shift system.

“If we are serious about quality, then we must provide universal secondary education, we must remove the shift system, and we must reduce overcrowding. Building more schools and improving the ones we have will increase access but it will also increase quality,” Holness said.

The minister added that in order to offer universal secondary education up to grade 11, the State would need to remove the shift system as well as build and refurbish at least 100 schools.

The estimated cost of building a school to accommodate 1,200 students is US$6.5 million.

Jamaica Gleaner (Daraine Luton)

Audley Shaw, Minister on Finance and the Public Service speaks in Parliament yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

FOURTEEN YEARS after the nation ended its borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Government has admitted it has no choice but to return to the multilateral lending agency.

In a statement to Parliament yesterday, Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw said Cabinet on Monday gave approval for a re-engagement with the fund.

“Cabinet yesterday authorised me to make a formal application to the IMF to seek to borrow up to 300 per cent of quota (approximately US$1.2 billion) in the standby agreement,” Shaw told Parliament.

“We expect to complete the preparatory work and documentation by mid-August and to make a formal submission to the executive board of the IMF when it resumes in September.”

Then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, during a People’s National Party (PNP) annual conference in September 1995, bid ‘goodbye’ to the international lending agency which the country first approached for budgetary support in the 1970s.

“Goodbye, ta-ta, au revoir,” Patterson said to thousands of cheering PNP supporters.

The nation’s relationship with the IMF became tense in the late 1970s and 1980s as a result of strict conditionalities such as a public-sector wage freeze, increase in interest rates and other belt-tightening measures.

Yesterday, stone-faced parliamentarians sat inside Gordon House and listened attentively as Shaw outlined the rationale for and process of Jamaica’s return to the fund.

The finance minister, saying the country was facing tough times, pointed to a fallout in foreign-exchange earnings and capitalflows; a scarcity of loan funds on the international capital market; as well as “the prospect of a severe contraction in the local economy beyond the present crisis”, as he painted a picture of Jamaica being caught between a rock and a hard place.

“Jamaica has no real option at this time but to return to a borrowing relationship with the IMF,” Shaw said.

The nation faces a balance of payment gap of US$600 million - US$800 million this fiscal year, meaning the country would barely be able to pay for its imports.

The economy has been crumbling under the weight of the global economic meltdown, with the finance ministry stating that the country will lose approximately US$1.3 billion in revenue this year as a result of a fallout in bauxite, remittances, tourism and other sectors.

Economic woes

Revenue collection by the government fell J$5.5 billion short of projections two months into the fiscal year.

Consequently, as economic woes threatened to paralyse the country, the Government cut its projected spending by J$3.4 billion.

Shaw said the country was still in a position to manage its housekeeping expenses but admitted help was needed.

He noted that the IMF board has already approved a general allocation of $250 billion in special drawing rights (SDR), among member countries, which is likely to be ratified by its board of governors. Jamaica’s share of this allocation would amount to US$320 million in loans

before the Annual IMF/World Bank meetings in October.

The IMF had established a special standby facility to assist developing countries such as Jamaica take care of their balance-of-payments obligations and keep their economies afloat.

Shaw said the signing off on the standby arrangement by Septem-ber, in which the fund would commit $1.2 billion over two years, would provide Jamaica with the wherewithal to meet all its external commitments.

“It would be expected that at least US$400 million of the stand-by arrangement would be available up front,” he said, adding that Jamaica would also be looking to raise up to US$500 million from other multilateral sources.

While the arrangement will require the country to be run more efficiently, Shaw said there would be no drastic layoff of government workers.

Responding to Central Kingston MP Ronald Thwaites, on the question of possible retrenchment of public-sector workers, Shaw said “there is no immediate plan of the Government to provide any kind of shock treatment to the public sector”.

“Certainly, attention will be paid to attrition and the replacement of jobs that are normal jobs in terms of retirement and so on … unless it is a critical post … retrenching that post with new employment. We will be considering retrenchment, transfer and so on, rather than new people being employed,” Shaw added.

Stabroek News (Guyana)

-Sir Shridath to take up role
After two weeks of conflict which saw a second-string team being pressed into action against Bangladesh, the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have agreed to mediation following a meeting with CARICOM Chairman, President Bharrat Jagdeo.

WIPA President Dinanath Ramnarine (left) and Dr Julian Hunte, WICB Presi-dent, shake hands to signify the completion of the agreement between the two parties, as CARICOM Chairman, President Bharrat Jagdeo looks on. (Office of the President photo)

The parties met at the Office of the President yesterday and they signed a memorandum of understanding there, potentially bringing  an end to the impasse between the two parties and the strike by the West Indies  cricket team.

WIPA had written to President Jagdeo asking him as CARICOM Chairman to intervene, reminiscent of the intervention by former prime minister of Grenada, Keith Mitchell when he was chairman,  to bring back a state of normalcy to West Indies cricket.

President  Jagdeo brought together Dr Julian Hunte, President of the WICB and Dinanath Ramnarine, President of the WIPA and other representatives of the two organizations at the Office of the President yesterday to negotiate a truce between the two parties in the interest of West Indies cricket.

Senior West Indies players including captain Chris Gayle, Guyanese Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan and others had boycotted the recently-concluded two-test series in the Caribbean against Bangladesh, forcing the WICB to raise a second-string team that was defeated 2-0.

The outstanding issues between the two sides revolve around the failure of the WICB to pay the players for the last four tours and to provide them with retainer contracts.

The Head of State, who assumed the CARICOM Chairmanship on July 1, had moved quickly to resolve the outstanding issues between the parties, given the importance of West Indies cricket to the region.

Jagdeo met with the representatives of the two organizations separately to establish their requirements, before bringing them together to iron out their outstanding issues.

According to a press release from the Office of the President, the two parties have reached agreement for the immediate mediation of the dispute between them.

Under the agreement, the parties have jointly invited Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, to be the mediator. They have done so on the basis of their mutual acceptance of the importance and urgency of resolving the immediate differences between them, and setting their relationship on a path of lasting cooperation.

It was also agreed that in light of the mediation agreement which the parties expect to lead to the resolution of outstanding issues, all the players will make themselves available for selection.

Speaking with reporters after their meeting with Jagdeo, Ramnarine and Hunte both said that they were happy with the way things have turned out after their talks with the CARICOM Chairman, but said that due to the fact that they have agreed to mediation, there is only so much that they could say.

“The discussion came off well between us and I’m happy, but we can’t say no more but in due time everything would unfold,” the WICB President said. “We are comfortable with what was said here today and the agreement between the two parties but like he (Hunte) said we are under mediation so there is only so much we can say right now, but like I said we are happy,” Ramnarine added.

It was not stated whether the full-strength WI team would return for the two One Day Internationals (ODI) between the West Indies and the touring Bangladesh side scheduled for July 26 and 28 in Dominica.

However, the WICB had named a second string team for the  International Cricket Council (ICC) Champion’s Trophy in September which will be held in South Africa but based on the arrangement between the WICB and WIPA, it is presumed that that list would be squashed to make way for the regulars.

 Stabroek News (Guyana)

Public sector employees will receive a pay increase this year, although Guyana is feeling the effects of the global financial and economic crisis in its real sector, President Bharrat Jagdeo has said.

President Jagdeo made this disclosure during an interview on Monday with the state-owned National Communications Network (NCN) in which he was focusing on the role he has been assigned as the Chairman of the regional task force, established at the recently-concluded 30th CARICOM Heads of Government Conference held in Guyana, to seek solutions to the ongoing crisis, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported yesterday.

He said that his government’s stewardship of the economy had placed Guyana in the position of riding out the crisis without much setback.

Jagdeo noted further that government had maintained spending, especially on the social services, and while other countries in the Caribbean, like Jamaica, have been forced to either cut or freeze wages, Guyanese workers can expect an increase this year, GINA reported.

However, the Head of State observed that the crisis has been affecting several CARICOM countries, generating serious social consequences.

In Jamaica, 60% of merchandise exports have been lost, Dominica was forced to take an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Antigua and Barbuda has lost over 1,000 jobs from the fallout of the Stanford debacle, which for a country of just over 100,000 people is a major setback.

And tourism and financial services, which are significant revenue earners and job providers in the Caribbean, have been severely affected by the crisis.

Moreover, Jagdeo said, remittances which are a significant contributor to several economies have slumped as Caribbean nationals in the developed world seek to cope with the economic depression in which millions of people have lost their jobs and homes.

In the meantime, the real sector in Guyana has been affected as a fall in global demand for export commodities has resulted in less revenue for the country. Bauxite companies operating here, BOSAI and RUSAL, have faced difficulties.

And some construction projects have been put on hold because the investors have been unable to raise the finances needed in this tough economic climate, GINA added.