By Sir Ronald Sanders

Huge challenges lie ahead for the Caribbean in tourism, but none will be as big as coping with the two largest cruise ships in the world, one of which will be sailing the Caribbean starting this December.
The cruise ships will be of the Royal Caribbean International line. They are both presently under construction in Finland, a country little known in the Caribbean but whose products are major contributors to the economies of several Caribbean countries.
For example, 14 of the 14 largest cruise ships in the world – in other words all of them – have been built in Finland, a small northern Europe country bounded by Russia, Sweden, Norway and the Baltic Sea.
With a population of 5.3 million people and very little natural resources beyond forestry, Finland has become a modern European nation through its development and application of technological expertise. Building giant cruise ships with all the amenities and more of a main town centre in the Caribbean is just one of the examples of the achievements of this little country, once ruled by Sweden and then made an autonomous region of Russia before its independence in 1917.
Another example of its technological accomplishment is the remarkable global market that Finland has achieved in telecommunications with Nokia mobile telephones, mistakenly believed by many to be a Japanese product.
The cruise ships built in Finland are powered by engines manufactured by Wartsila, another Finnish company that has made an impact on the Caribbean. The engines in one of the large cruise ships provide more power than is required in a country such as St Lucia.
Of course, Wartsila is now the supplier to power companies of many Caribbean countries. It has developed the technological capacity to track by computers the performance of its engines wherever they are. Thus, from its headquarters in Finland, for instance, technicians can monitor impending problems and provide solutions. The company can do the same for the engines on board ships.
Wartsila will be doing this job for Oasis of the Seas which will be the largest cruise ship in the world when the builder, StxEurope, hands it over to Royal Caribbean International in October.
Many Caribbean ports will not see this ship or its sister, Allure of the Seas, even though Oasis starts sailing in December. They simply will not have the port facilities to accommodate them. Oasis will call at St Thomas (US Virgin Islands), St Maarten, and the Bahamas on its Eastern Caribbean cruise and at Haiti and Jamaica on its Western Caribbean cruise up to April 2010.
Barbados and Eastern Caribbean countries, such as Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Grenada and St Lucia will have to calculate whether or not it is worth the expense of trying to attract these two giant vessels to their ports.
I went to see the Oasis and the Allure under construction in Turku, a City on Finland’s Baltic Sea coast. Even in Europe with its modern high rise buildings, both ships dominated the landscape, dwarfing everything around it.
The Oasis was a hive of activity. The work on this 225,000 ton ship involved thousands of people and the organisation of it would require the logistical expertise of a city municipality. It has taken 20 months to bring the ship from ground zero to the towering edifice it now is. It has to be delivered in 40 working days, and no one has any doubt that it will be.
But this is no ordinary ship. In truth, there is nothing else like it. It will carry 6,000 passengers and 2,160 crew, and unlike any other cruise ship, it will have a “Central Park”- a fully open air area in the centre of the ship giving inside Cabins both sunlight and a view. It is in fact a small town centre with restaurants, shops, bars, and three themed garden spaces.
One of the great engineering and technological accomplishments of the Finnish designers and engineers is a Bar that rises from the ground up to three levels levitated by jet-streams of water. But so too are basketball courts where Finnish research and development has overcome the problem of bouncing balls reverberating through the floor.
A huge open air Boardwalk with a real Carousel for kids, two rock climbing walls, a beach with real sand, ice cream parlor and shops, is at the other end of the ship. Another engineering and technological feat was stabilising the Carousel so that it would not be affected by the movement of the sea.
StxEurope promote their work on the Oasis as “Creating the Incredible” - and they are right. The ship defies imagination. 1,181 feet long (361 m), 236 feet high (72 m) with 15 passenger decks and 2,700 cabins plus the amenities I have described here and even more besides, this ship has to be seen to be believed. The same is true of its sister, Allure.
The problems that the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) countries face with these two huge ships are two in number.
First, apart from Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas which have port facilities to handle these ships, several of the others will have to build capacity to accommodate them; a cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken to advise a decision. The logistics of disembarking 6,000 passengers and getting them back on board in a six hour period will be trying indeed.
Second, these ships are destinations in themselves; they have more entertainment amenities including theatres, shopping, restaurants, bars, health spas, swimming pools, sports facilities than many Caribbean towns. They are also a safe and secure environment. In this sense, the ships themselves are direct competition for the Caribbean destinations at which they will call.
Why then should passengers come off these ships to visit Caribbean islands? That is the challenge that this new generation of cruise ships provide for tourism planners and policy makers in the region. Tourism officials have to devise new strategies and some major attraction to lure the larger number of passengers on these megaships. If not, Caribbean countries will become marginal to the cruise ship business, providing little more benefit than they now do.
(The writer is a Consultant and former Caribbean diplomat)
Responses and previous commentaries can be sent and read at: www.sirronaldsanders.com

BLACK EYE PEAS AND RICE; BAKED CHICKEN

BAKED PORK; SWEET POTATO PIE

FRIED POT FISH; FRIED BARRACUDA

GRILLED BARRACUDA; LAMB STEW

FISH GRAVY; STEAMED VEGS

POTATO SALAD; GARDEN SALAD

The Board of Directors of the Caricom Development Fund (CDF) will start full operations tomorrow.

According to a Caricom press release the date was set after the Fifth Regular Board Meeting approved the regulations and procedures which will govern the CDF operations. Among the governance rules and procedures approved were the Appraisal and Disbursement Procedures and Guidelines and the Procurement Procedures. Both of these define the rules related to the CDF’s consideration of requests for grant or loan funding and related procurement activities, the release said.

In determining the targets and ratios that will condition disbursement, the board considered the current level of the CDF capital fund which now stands at US$77.7M. It also considered the sustainability of the capital fund, the need to turn around project requests within three months and issues of equity which will ensure that all eligible member states have a reasonable expectation of accessing CDF resources. The board also considered the global financial crisis and the increased challenge of raising donor funding in this environment.

To be eligible for consideration of grant or loan funding member states must be fully paid up in accordance with the agreement. The governance rules and procedures will be posted on the CSME website on Friday.

-amid claims of irregularities
Incumbent Robert Corbin was re-elected leader of the PNCR last evening, following polls at the party’s 16th Biennial Congress that were attended by numerous claims of irregularities.

Robert Corbin

Corbin won overwhelmingly, securing 614 votes to the 223 that were cast for his sole challenger Winston Murray, who accepted the results but stated that he was disappointed and would need time to reflect on his future. “Yes, I am prepared to accept the results,” he said shortly after the announcement, explaining “Because the margin is so wide, that even if there were – as I believe there were – flaws in the process and irregularities in the procedures, it is clear that Mr Corbin would have won.”

In a brief statement, Corbin said he was grateful to God and thankful to the people for displaying confidence in him. “I would much prefer to speak a bit later when the entire elections are over because this is not about one person, this is about the team and about the PNCR coming out the winner,” he declared.

The announcement of Corbin’s victory triggered cheers among a small crowd of his supporters, while groups of other persons who were disappointed filed out of Congress Place. In the vote for leader, 847 votes were cast from an official list of 1175 delegates.

Up to press time, the voting process for other party offices, including Chairman and Vice-Chairman, was still underway. Earlier, Corbin’s supporters directed delegates to vote for party stalwart Cammie Ramsaroop as Chairman of the party, and Basil Williams and Dr George Norton for the two Vice-Chairman posts.

Murray demurred on the question of his own future, adding that he did not want to sound a sore loser since, “As of now I remain a member of the PNCR,” as of now, I remain a Member of Parliament and I will have to take time to contemplate [my political future], it is not something I would be rushed into,” he said, adding later, “I have to allow some time to pass, let the dust settle and then determine where I go.”

He thanked his supporters for their work, saying “I really, really appreciate it but we didn’t pull it off,” while they thanked him for his candidacy and his conduct throughout the process.

Winston Murray

While Murray emphasised that he did not want to take issue public with the results, he noted the claims by his supporters that one region in particular turned in very inflated membership. One of his major backers, Dr Richard Van West-Charles, who bowed out of the race for leader to support Murray, noted that concerns about some of the flaws in the procedures had gone unanswered, adding that it could have been more efficient to guard against problems during registration and the voting.

Voting began nearly five hours after the scheduled start owing to problems during the registration of delegates, which had first been manifested on the days before the official opening.

There were numerous claims of disenfranchisement during and after registration for delegates yesterday, including by many members from hinterland regions 1, 7 and 9, who were only allowed to attend as observers rather than delegates. Similar complaints were made by persons from other regions as well.

Tempers flared between Corbin and Murray’s supporters in front of the registration centre at the start of the day, as persons lined up to collect their delegate and observer ID cards. The arrival of a contingent of Corbin supporters from regions 4 and 5, who were bussed in, led to confusion as people claimed that ID cards were being handed out in wads before any of them completed their registration. According to the official guidelines for the registration, persons were supposed to go to the centre and sign to uplift cards.

Stabroek News observed some persons handing over what appeared to be delegate cards to others outside the registration centre, even as automatic delegates complained that their names were not on the official register. Among those who were not recognised as delegates was PNCR MP Judith Blair, who should have been an automatic delegate. However, she was told that her name was not on the delegates’ list. A national candidate for the party, GTUC President Gillian Burton, was also supposed to be an automatic delegate but her name was not on the list and she was later accredited as a delegate belonging to the Agricola group.

One man showed this newspaper a delegate card for a person whom he claimed was dead. He explained that he was told at the registration centre that his name was not on the list of delegates and after calling a regional representative he was then given a card with someone else’s name.

The card appeared to be an official delegates’ card with both an identification number as well as the signature of Convenor of the Accreditation Committee Lance Carberry.

Later, during the voting process, several persons expressed concern that multiple voting occurred and even before the ballots were counted large groups of people filed out of Congress Place.

 Jamaica

Ryan Tracy thought he had entered the Dark Ages when he graduated college and arrived in the working world.

His employer blocked access to Facebook, Gmail and other popular Internet sites.

He had no wireless access for his laptop and often ran to a nearby café on work time so he could use its Wi-Fi connection to send large files.

Sure, the barriers did what his employer intended: They stopped him and his colleagues from using work time to goof around online.

But Tracy says the rules also got in the way of legitimate work he needed to do as a scientific analyst for a health care services company.

“It was a constant battle between the people that saw technology as an advantage, and those that saw it as a hindrance,” says the 27-year-old Chicagoan, who now works for a different company.

He was sure there had to be a better way.

It is a common complaint from young people who join the work force with the expectation that their bosses will embrace technology as much as they do.

Then some discover that sites they are supposed to be researching for work are blocked. Or they can’t take a little down time to read a news story online or check their personal email or social-networking accounts. In some cases, they end up using their own Internet-enabled smart phones to get to blocked sites, either for work or fun.

So some are wondering: Could companies take a different approach, without compromising security or workplace efficiency, that allows at least some of the online access that younger employees particularly crave?

Mutual understanding

“It’s no different than spending too much time around the water cooler or making too many personal phone calls. Do you take those away? No,” says Gary Rudman, president of GTR Consulting, a market research firm that tracks the habits of young people. “These two worlds will continue to collide until there’s a mutual understanding that performance, not Internet usage, is what really matters.”

This is, after all, a generation of young people known for what University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman calls “media multiplexity”.

College students he has studied tell him how they sleep with their smart phones and, in some cases, consider their gadgets to be like a part of their bodies. They are also less likely to fit the traditional nine-to-five work mode and are willing to put in time after hours in exchange for flexibility, including online time.

So, Wellman and others argue, why not embrace that working style when possible, rather than fight it?

There is, of course, another side of the story - from employers who worry about everything from wasted time on the Internet to confidentiality breaches and liability for what their employees do online. Such concerns have to be taken especially seriously in such highly regulated fields as finance and health care, says Nancy Flynn, a corporate consultant who heads the Ohio-based ePolicy Institute.

Sharing sites

From a survey Flynn did this year with the American Management Association, she believes nearly half of US employers have a policy banning visits to personal social networking or video-sharing sites during work hours. Many also ban personal text messaging during working days.

Flynn notes that the rising popularity of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices with Web access and messaging have made it much trickier to enforce what is being done on work time, particularly on an employee’s personal phone. Or often the staff uses unapproved software applications to bypass the blocks.

As a result, more employers are experimenting with opening access.

That is what Joe Dwyer decided to do when he started Chicago-based Brill Street & Co, a jobs site for young professionals.

He lets his employees use social networking and has found that, while they might spend time chatting up their friends, sometimes they are asking those same friends for advice for a work problem or looking for useful contacts.

“So what seems unproductive can be very productive,” Dwyer says.

Kraft Foods Inc recently opened access to everything from YouTube to Facebook and Hotmail, with the caveat that personal use be reasonable and never interfere with job activities.

Broadening access does, of course, mean some employees will cross lines they are not supposed to.

Sapphire Technologies LP, an information-technology staffing firm based in Massachusetts, started allowing employees to use most Internet sites two years ago, because recruiters for the company were going on Facebook to find talent.

Martin Perry, the company’s chief information officer, says managers occasionally have to give employees a “slap on the wrist” for watching sports or streaming video or downloading movies on iTunes.

And he says older managers sometimes raise eyebrows at their younger counterparts’ online judgment.

“If you saw some of the pictures that they’ve uploaded, even to our internal directory, you’d question the maturity,” Perry says.

It is the price a company has to pay, he says, for attracting top young talent that is willing to work at any hour. “Banning the Internet during work hours would be myopic on our part,” Perry says.

But that also means many companies are still figuring out their online policies and how to deal with the blurring lines between work and personal time - including social networking, even with the boss.

Formal training

“I think over time, an open embrace of these tools can become like an awkward hug,” says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “It can get very messy.”

One option is for companies to allow access to certain sites but limit what employees can do there.

For instance, Palo Alto Networks, a computer security company, recently helped a pharmaceutical company and a furniture maker open up social networking for some employees, but limited such options as file-sharing, largely so that sensitive information is not transferred, even accidentally.

“Wide-open Internet access is the risky approach,” says Chris King, Palo Alto Networks’ director of product marketing. However, “fully closed is increasingly untenable for cultural reasons and business reasons”.

Flynn, at the ePolicy Institute, says it is important that employers have a clear online policy and then explain it. She believes not enough employers have conducted formal training on such matters as online liability and confidentiality.

Meantime, her advice to any employee is this: “Don’t start blogging. Don’t start tweeting. Don’t even start emailing until you read the company policy.”

A view of a section of the Gleaner building, downtown Kingston. Showing signs that it is holding up in Jamaica’s deepening recession, The Gleaner Company Limited has reported after-tax profit of $27 million for the three months to June, reversing its first-quarter loss of $14.6 million.

The second-quarter return was on the back of revenue of just under $965 million, which was $76 million, or seven per cent below that for the corresponding period in 2008.

The group’s media interests accounted for 87 per cent of first-half turnover and returned pre-tax operating profit of around $74 million. But more significantly, in a quarter when the Jamaican economy declined by close to four per cent and most media companies saw their reflection in lower advertising sales, The Gleaner Company’s second-quarter revenue was 4.5 per cent higher than the $922.5 million in the first quarter.

Despite the uptick in the June quarter, the performance was not sufficient to fully reverse the stresses of much of the previous nine months, when the economy started to head decidedly south and The Gleaner aggressively began to position itself to face the recession, including a $368 million impairment loss in FY2008.

Cost containment

The upshot was that six-month revenue, at $1.9 billion, was four per cent lower than the turnover for the January to June period last year, when net profit was $79.7 million. That profit, however, was buoyed by net impact of non-trading profits of $85 million resulting from sales in Lascelles de Mercado shares and employee-benefit assets, offset by impairment charges.

Important to The Gleaner, in this period of recession was its clear success in containing costs.

The company’s administrative expense in the second quarter, at $148 million, was 32 per cent lower than in the first quarter and 23 per cent less than the corresponding three months in 2008. However, for the six months to June, these administrative costs were two per cent higher than in last year’s first half, suggestive of a time lag between the implementation of belt-tightening measures and when they started to show returns.

Distribution area

Another significant area of cost containment was distribution, for which the company outlaid $174 million in the second quarter. This expenditure was approximately seven per cent below the first quarter and three per cent below the corresponding quarter in 2008.

“Second-quarter performance has been creditable. The company’s management and staff have responded well by tightening up on costs in this current environment of revenue uncertainty,” said Christopher Barnes, deputy managing director.

“Going forward, if revenue projections hold, with aggressive focus on product offering and continued cost reduction, and little likelihood of further impairment charges, the company’s performance should continue to improve.”

AP Photos
LEFT: Jamaica’s Aleen Bailey, Simone Facey, Kerron Stewart and Shelly-Ann Fraser celebrate winning the gold in the women’s 4×100m relay during the World Championships in Berlin.
RIGHT: Jamaica’s (from left) Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Michael Frater and Steve Mullings celebrate winning gold in the men’s 4×100m final during the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin yesterday. Medal Tally

7 Gold, 3 Silver, 2 Bronze

Anthony Foster, Gleaner Sports Writer

Regardless of the performance of Jamaica’s women in today’s 4×400m relay final, the country has already created World Athletics Championship history.

Helsinki, Finland, in 1983 was where it all started when Bert Cameron pocketed gold in the men’s 400m, running an impressive 45.05 seconds. The outstanding Merlene Ottey took the baton and collected back-to-back 200m gold medals in 1993 and 1995.

After that, the country experienced a drought of individual gold medals until Trecia Smith’s triple jump gold in 2005.

Jamaican superstar Veronica Campbell-Brown added the 100m title in Osaka, Japan, in 2007.

Team Jamaica did, however, win a gold medal in the women’s 4×100m in 1991.

The 2001 women’s 4×400m relay team finished second but was awarded the gold medal after the United States team was disqualified.

Awesome performance

Before this awesome performance, Jamaica had won overall seven gold, 29 silver and 30 bronze medals at the World Athletics Championships but no more than a single gold came at any one meet.

The country’s best medal haul came in Osaka, Japan, in 2007, where athletes took home one gold, six silver and three bronze medals.

With one day left in the 2009 Championships, Team Jamaica has already grabbed 12 medals, seven gold, three silver and two bronze.

But even more impressive was the performances in victory.

It’s the first time Team Jamaica has grabbed the men’s 100m and 200m, women’s 400m and 100m hurdles, along with the men’s 4×100m relay.

It is a performance which has been hailed by Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

“The performance of our athletes at the Berlin games and the victories they have brought to our country almost on a daily basis confirm that this country is destined for greatness.

“We are blessed, our people are blessed and we now need to translate this energy, this determination, discipline and drive into all spheres of our lives,” Golding said.

According to Golding, “The athletes have outdone themselves, bringing with them a nation that is bursting with pride and joy, beyond words.”

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS in the hurricane-prone Caribbean has just had a boost.

It came from a recent signing in Barbados of a partnership agreement between the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF).

The pact is aimedat strengthening the resilience of Barbados and other regional countries through the development of strategies to lessenthe physical and socio-economic impact of natural disasters.

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) formalises a partnership “that will facilitate capacity-building among regional disaster agencies, provide access to real-time hurricane hazard and impact information and assist governments to better understand risk financing”, according to a statement from CDERA.

It will benefit 19 Caribbean countries, among them Grenada, Guyana, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, Bermuda, Anguilla and Antigua.

CDERA’s co-ordinator Jeremy Collymore, and CCRIF’s chairman Milo Pearson signed the MOU at the Wildey, St Michael headquarters of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

Collymore said the MOU would help the region “build a culture of safety and resilient development practices, necessary for sustainable development”.

The partnership is coming in a decade characterised by an increase in the number and frequency of major hurricanes in the Caribbean, he pointed out.

“The associated damages and losses have also been on the increase, bordering on catastrophic, and even impacting states such as Cuba, where preparedness systems are legendary,” he added.

Damages and losses

“In many cases, response and grant assistance represent a very small fraction of the costs associated with damages and loss, often less than 20 per cent.”

Pearson said the agreement would contribute to reducing “existing and future vulnerability to damage and loss”.

This will be achieved through developments including the introduction of new products, programmes and initiatives “to assist Caribbean governments to better understand and finance their catastrophe risk exposures”, he explained.

CCRIF is a new regional insurance fund for Caribbean governments designed to limit the financial impact of catastrophic hurricanes and earthquakes by quickly providing financial liquidity when a policy is triggered.

In 2008, the agency paid out about US$6.3 million to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the aftermathof Hurricane Ike, according to a statement released here. (TY)