Moontown

The event, a party and concert featuring a range of international performers as well as top Jamaican artists, will be held at Richmond Estate in St Ann.

Jamaican Triple Olympic and world champion sprinter Usain Bolt. AFP PHOTO

Appearing apart from The Dream, will be the internationally renowned Queen of Reggae, Marcia Grifiths, along with local stars Etana, Cherine Anderson, Vybz Kartel and the Empire, Voicemail, Konshens, D-Major, Chris Martin, KipRich and Aidonia.

The highlights of the night will include an exchange of gifts between Usain and the Bob Marley family as well as presentations of autographed gifts from Bolt to invited celebrity guests. Usain himself will act as the host and also do DJ duty at the turntable.

American sprinter Wallace Spearmon and Trinidad and Tobago athletes are among those who have said they will attend.

Proceeds from the event will be donated to various foundations through the United Way Charity.

The United Way Charity comes under the leadership of United Way Worldwide, a support organisation for a network of nearly 1,800 community-based United Way branches in 45 countries and territories. (Caribnet)

Addressing the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (GCCI) annual awards and dinner presentation on Wednesday, Bourne says another challenge is the slothfulness of the court system in resolving business disputes.

He has called for authorities across the Caribbean to address these shortcomings, so that the environment for doing business can be more conducive and attractive.

Turing his attention to the global financial crisis and its impact on the Caribbean, Bourne said several sectors in the Caribbean have been severely hit by the crisis, including tourism trade and bauxite.

He also cited the decrease in foreign investment in the Caribbean as another effect of the crisis.

However, Bourne said the CDB will not sit idly by and allow the crisis to shrivel the regional economies as already it is responding to the challenges facing the region.

“We at the CDB have been doing our best to modify policies and provide assistance… we have reduced the counterpart funding required for countries seeking to borrow money from the CDB, we are currently making fuller use of our policy based loans which provide strategy support to countries.” Bourne explained.

He added that the bank has also reduced the interest rates continuously to the clients of the bank.

The CDB president added that two major initiatives are on stream to assist indigenous banks and hotels affected by low visitor arrivals.

The CDB will provide liquidity support to some banks, particularly indigenous banks that are in some difficulty, and liquidity support to some hotels in the region that would normally be viable but whose vulnerability is threatened by fall in visitor arrivals.

Bourne, a Guyanese scholar, was sworn in on Thursday as the eighthchancellor of the institution which is undergoing major restructuring.

Bourne in an invited comment said he will be seeking close collaboration with the government as he cited the need to identify a complement of priorities that can be pursued urgently to raise the standards of the institution.

“I think it is important that we act quickly and that we begin to deliver some early fruits so that morale improves and we send the right signals to the various institutions and individuals who we hope can be of support,” Bourne said

He also highlighted the areas where the University has the potential to gain a competitive advantage in the area of research both regionally and internationally.

“I think there are some areas, for instance, dealing with the environment, dealing with the climate change issue, which are very much front-burner issues and which Guyana has a basis for an advantage in the world, especially if it acts in partnership with some other institutions that are on the leading edge in that endeavour,” he added, noting that tourism, education, research, eco-tourism, biodiversity, forestry and agriculture as other areas the institution will seek collaboration on

Bourne is a former Principal of the St Augustine Campus of The University of the West Indies and has been an active contributor to public economic policy in the Caribbean, Africa and the Philippines since 1975.

He graduated from the University of London, the University of Birmingham and the University of the West Indies, and is a recipient of Guyana’s highest award, the Order of Excellence (OE).

Minister of Social Care, Christopher Sinckler (FP)

This observation was made Thursday by Minister of Social Care, Christopher Sinckler, while speaking at the launch of Barbadian sociologist, Lloyd Springer’s book “Fatherhood in the Neighbourhood”.

Noting that the female-headed households had become a dominant feature in the Caribbean and the role of males in many families had become marginalised, he said we had not “seriously tackled what type of family is best for us, or the family that we want to see in our society.”

Sinckler opined: “We have a structure that is ill-defined and, in many ways, it is unmanageable. I think in order for us to get to the root of why our fathers or men have been marginalised in the context of that, we need to seriously re-examine and for ourselves determine what is the appropriate family structure in Barbados and the Caribbean.

“To do otherwise, I think would be a clear and distinct failure in our responsibility to build our nation, because family building is really nation building. To be able to begin that seminal work, we have to look at our re-culturalisation within the society. We often say, but we don’t put a sufficiently high value on how foreign influences have determined, in a certain way, the cultural practices that we have,” he stated.

Citing some instances where Caribbean people had begun to take on the practices of other cultures, Sinckler said re-culturalisation had to take place because we were imitating values that were foreign to our own existence.

The Social Care Minister also pointed to the need to redefine what “maleness” represents because, according to him, “males either through their own actions or by the breakdown in the institutional and cultural structures in society have become emasculated and they are really less than they ought to be within society.”

Noting the work that was being done by the Men’s Educational Support Association (MESA) on the role of fathers and the need for them to play a more central part in society, he hoped those efforts and “Fatherhood in the Neighbourhood” would restore the pride of males.

“If we don’t address these issues, we are going to have consistent problems with what we are seeing coming across. I think that type of self-actualisation is critical to what we want to do, and my hope is that this excellent work, with its empirical investigation, by speaking directly to people who are affected, can begin that process for reconstituting the family as a critical institution within our society,” Mr. Sinckler stated. (Caribnet)

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) — The government will continue its oil exploration project, but Barbados must be prudent about the areas in which it speculates for business returns. The present focus is therefore, on some short- term initiatives that must be undertaken to stabilise existing enterprises and businesses in Barbados, and, at the same time, attract new investment.

Prime Minister David Thompson briefing the media at hte press conference. At right is IADB Representatative in Barbados, Anneke Jessen. (BGIS photo)

Prime Minister David Thompson made this disclosure recently, as he announced the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IADB) $400 million Country Strategy with Barbados for 2009-2013, which includes energy as a priority sector.

“Oil exploration is always market driven and when oil prices are high, it is more attractive for a destination like Barbados, for people to explore and drill oil. There is a threshold that would kick in that would make Barbados an attractive place to drill oil. If oil prices then come down, it may not be as attractive a proposition,” Thompson observed.

Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Senator Darcy Boyce, noted that Government continued to work with one oil company in terms of negotiations for a licence.

“We are looking at ways to get other persons interested, but there are driven by the cost of oil, the cost of finance, the availability of capital for these ventures and by the quality of the fields that are found … There have been some very substantial finds offshore Brazil and so on in the last year and a half,” he explained.

Senator Boyce stressed that with respect to Barbados, some surveys had been done, but, he added, “we have to do additional surveys to be able to prove the extent and the nature of the reserves and how you will get those reserves”.

Earlier this year, Government announced that it had granted its first oil and gas offshore licence for two blocks, Carlisle Bay and Bimshire, to oil, gas and mineral exploration company, BHP Billiton. (Caribnet)

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) — The Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) has been praised for its contribution to agriculture and has been urged to step up its efforts to provide wholesome food, while helping Barbados to achieve food sovereignty.

Minister of Agriculture, Haynesley Benn (standing), as he addressed CARDI’s opening day. Also at the head table are President of the National Union of Farmers, Julian Dottin (right of Minister), Chief Extension Officer at the Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, Euklyn Worrell and missing from the photo is CARDI Representative, Cyril Roberts. (BGIS photo)

This call has come from Minister of Agriculture, Senator Haynesley Benn. He was delivering the feature address on Thursday at the organisation’s open day.

While noting that he had “high regard and deep respect” for CARDI’s work over the years in developing agriculture, the Minister, who recently returned from the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s World Food Summit in Rome, Italy, emphasised the need for local food sovereignty.

“The farming community must be in the vanguard of this charge to help this nation to achieve food security. As a matter of fact, we, in this Ministry have adopted a decree called food sovereignty. We have moved past food security… We want to focus on domestic production to satisfy our local needs and when we are satisfied that we can feed ourselves, we can boast about food sovereignty,” Minister Benn said.

He called on CARDI to focus on increasing the food production of farmers and the identification of fruits and vegetables that could be grown as cash crops. “Food security can be achieved by importing the foods that you want and once there is adequate food on the table, whether it comes from local or overseas [producers], you are secure… But food sovereignty is about a country seeking to produce the kind of food that can make a country self-sufficient and Barbados is far from being self-sufficient,” he opined.

Outlining that Barbados imports close to 74 per cent of its food, comprising mostly processed foods, Senator Benn revealed that the country could claim to be self-sufficient in poultry, and egg production, as well as in some areas of vegetable production, but the same cannot be stated for beef or lamb supplies.

He, however, expressed gratitude to local farmers for responding to the Ministry’s call for increased food production and noted that more cassava, sweet potato, yams and herb crops had been produced. The Minister also pledged his Ministry’s support for farmers, not only through technical guidance, but in the acceleration of the rebate and incentive programme of the Ministry.

“We have sought to upgrade the incentives programme, but … we must now look at up-front incentives. Many times, farmers spend monies that they had to borrow and then wait for a while to get back some funds through the incentives programme,” Benn asserted.

In Barbados, CARDI leads the way in research and development in a number of commodities, including hot peppers, cassava and sweet potatoes, with a view to introducing high yielding crops and developing control measures against viral infection. CARDI Barbados is also involved in livestock research and development, including the evaluation of local feed resources, including their characterisation and evaluation and the development of feeding systems. In collaboration with the University of the West Indies and the Government, the unit is also mapping the genetic characteristics of the Barbados Blackbelly sheep.

CARDI’S annual open day events are being held at country representative offices around the region, over the period December 2009 - January 2010 and feature new technologies developed or adapted by CARDI to boost agricultural production. (Caribnet)

Ali Rodriguez said the banks were undergoing a “closed-door” inspection for “rehabilitation” days after a similar move led to the nationalization of four other banks.

Ali Rodriguez. AFP PHOTO

The latest government shutdown affects Central Banco Universal, Banco Real and Baninvest, the largest regional investment bank in eastern Tachira state. They are privately-owned banks with a limited list of clients and account for 1.8 percent of total deposits, according to banking regulators.

Leftist President Hugo Chavez has nationalized private banks in his bid to remake the economy. Two closures on Thursday prompted Venezuela’s currency and bonds to plunge in open trading, as former clients lined up outside several banks.

“What we have before us is not a national banking crisis,” Rodriguez said, trying to allay fears of a banking freeze.

“Despite the deep financial crisis hitting everybody and affecting the most developed economies in the world, the (Venezuelan banking) system has been showing great strength.”

After the Confederado and Bolivar banks were closed on Thursday, Chavez told a meeting of economic ministers that “once they have been rehabilitated,” the firms would become part of Venezuela’s public financial system.

Earlier this week, Chavez dissolved two other private banks — Banco Canarias and BanPro — after a series of nationalizations in other sectors.

Since taking office in 2007, Chavez has moved to control firms in the electricity production, cement, steel, oil services and banking industries.

More than 70 percent of the Venezuelan banking sector is privately owned, but the state has become the main financial actor, controlling 25 percent of the industry since May, when it nationalized Banco de Venezuela, the country’s third-largest bank that previously fell under the ownership of Spanish group Santander.

Amid a slowing Venezuelan economy, Chavez has indicated he may target more private banks, which he accused of having forsaken their lending “mission” to specialize in “financial speculation.”

According to US-based financial services firm JP Morgan, gross domestic product will shrink 2.5 percent this year, as foreign investment and the current account balance also worsen.

Hours before the latest closures, Chavez urged for calm and said that three people allegedly involved in banking irregularities had been arrested.

The Public Ministry has issued 10 arrest warrants and 19 travel bans so far against executives of the first four shuttered firms, said Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz.

-Aabida Allaham

WITHOUT skilled medical missionaries on call, local doctors might run amok.

This was stated by Dr Lesley Ann Roberts, medical director of the National Organ Transplant Unit, at a news conference to announce Republic Bank’s collaboration with Transplant Links Community (TLC) and the transplant unit to offer kidney transplant services to young children.

’I am saying that there is need for skilled professionals to have their hands held a little while longer because this is a learning process and children need a little extra care,’ she said.

Transplant Links, a UK-registered charity that saves the lives of children and adults who suffer from fatal kidney disease in the developing world, was established in 2006 by a group of British doctors with many years of transplant experience.

In fact, Roberts hailed TLC’s volunteering team because for one week, they were able to offer their expertise in performing these two-part surgeries on two paediatric patients with a local medical team, so that a sustainable transplant programme can be effectively managed in the long term.

Consultant transplant surgeon and medical director of TLC Andrew Ready added while he has met several skilled physicians here in Trinidad and Tobago, his team was only here to enhance these skills since this country has been unable to successfully perform and set up kidney transplant surgeries for children.

’We basically want to look at children on the island who are suffering from renal failure…because renal failure devastates a child’s life, and a transplant literally takes children away from that,’ he said.

In addition to that, Ready said he felt like it was his mandate to spread the good news about changes in the medical field as it pertained to transplants.

’Our job is to bring that revolution here to the doctors in Trinidad, so they can do those surgeries successfully,’ he said.

The surgeries, which were made possible through Republic Bank’s generous contribution of $273,608.97, involve the use of a ’keyhole’ removal surgery on the donor and a complete transplant on the recipient.

’While we agree that the provision of health care is the State’s responsibility, we are also painfully aware of the great need that exists for certain types of treatment which are not at this time available here in Trinidad and Tobago…and we believe that ours is a moral and social obligation to help,’ added Anna Maria Garcia-Brooks, general manager for the group, marketing and communications, at Republic Bank. (Trinidad Express)