31. January 2010 by admin.

St. Elmo’s Enterprises Inc.
Moon Town, St. Lucy

A growing and dynamic Supermarket, Restaurant, Internet Café and Sports Bar is looking to recruit the following persons:
1 Merchandiser
2 Cashiers
1 Waitress
1 Cook
Interested persons should forward application and Resume to:
The CEO
St. Elmo’s Enterprises Inc.
Moon Town
St. Lucy
Barbados
Or email: seeincmoontown@gmail.com

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31. January 2010 by admin.

A small dedicated unit is to be established to co-ordinate Caricom’s continued assistance to Haiti over the long term, following the catastrophic earthquake which struck that country on January 12.

The Bureau of Heads of Government of Caricom has mandated the Caricom Secretariat to establish this unit, which will be led by Caricom Assistant Secretary-General, Foreign and Community Relations, Ambassador Colin Granderson, the Caricom Secretariat at Turkeyen said in a recent news release.

The extended Bureau met in Paramaribo, Suriname, on Friday, hours before the start of a two-day Special Summit on Youth, to discuss principally the situation in Haiti.

According to the release, the Heads of Government received reports from Granderson, and Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) Jeremy Collymore, on the situation in Haiti and Caricom’s relief efforts.

Both Granderson and Collymore were recently in Haiti and they also attended a Coordination Committee Meeting in Montreal,  Canada, on January 25 which laid the groundwork for an international conference on the reconstruction of Haiti.

The unit will liaise with CDEMA and other agencies involved in the Caricom response to the disaster.

Member states and associate members will be asked to identify focal points to work with the unit. The unit will work closely with Caricom’s special envoy on Haiti, the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, PJ Patterson.

The release said the Bureau also agreed on ensuring the continued operations in Haiti of the Jamaica contingent which has been on the ground since January 13 underpinning the Caricom relief effort.

Jamaica is the sub-regional focal point in the regional disaster response system established by CDEMA, the regional response mechanism.

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31. January 2010 by admin.

Juhel Browne jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com

Members of the boards of State authorities and enterprises should not be subjected to terms limits. If so, then they should be extended to all high ranking public officials, including the Prime Minister. This was was stated by Prime Minister Patrick Manning two weeks ago in the Parliament in response to Opposition MP Dr Roodal Moonilal’s argument that term limits should be applied to those serving on the boards of all State authorities and enterprises. Being debated was a bill that seeks to bring an end to the term limits for the board directors of the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Aviation Authority (TTCAA) which had been included in the original legislation that established the authority. Moonilal argued that the term limits should not be removed and questioned why they were not applied to other high offices in the Public Service. ’There are those who say that you should restrict the term…in respect of the Civil Aviation Authority, there is a term restriction. I am not sure when that came into power, when that was implemented in the law and which government was in office at the time, I am not quite sure that I remember it. What I do know is that if we agree, Mr Speaker, that there should be a restriction on the term of members of the Civil Aviation Authority; then we have no argument whatsoever against extending that principle to every other authority in the country, every other State enterprise and eventually, Mr Speaker, eventually Mr Speaker, those who hold the highest positions in the land including the Prime Minister and or the President,’ Manning said. ’Mr Speaker, countries of our size and countries at our stage of development do not possess the range of resources and in the quantity that are required to be able to take positions like those which are luxuries that can only be visited on some developed countries,’ Manning added. The President, who is elected into office by the Electoral College which is comprised of all members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, already has a term limit of five years under the existing Constitution. There is no term limit set for the Prime Minister who first serves for a five-year period after the first General Election his party wins but can continue to stay in office as long as that party continues to be victorious at the polls under the existing Constitution, except for specific circumstance such as having to give up being an MP. Manning’s remarks come at a time when a round table of scholars operating out of his office is preparing a working document for the final draft of a new constitution that proposes the establishment of an executive president which is essentially a merger of the existing offices of the President and the Prime Minister. Manning made no mention of the proposed executive presidency but made reference to the constitutional reform exercise as he explained why his administration is satisfied that under the existing laws, this country is too small to have term limits for the holders of high public office such as the board members of the TTCAA. ’We argue things in a certain way. In fairness some of these things sound alright but in practice they don’t,’ Manning said. (Trinidad Express)

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31. January 2010 by admin.

CONDOMS may take away the sweetness, but unprotected sex not only leads to unplanned pregnancies but also to contracting sexually transmitted infections. And Carnival time, it seems, is the breeding ground for both. Sixteen-year-old Tia could tell you about the reality of this combination of Carnival and unprotected sex. ’You know some fellas does say if they use that they won’t feel the sweetness and sometimes I does just get caught up in the moment and don’t bother to get a condom,’ she told the Sunday Express. Tia, is a single mother to a four-month-old baby and she already has a history of genital infections. The ’child father’, as she called him, was a case of her ’playing fast’ last Carnival. He’s not around to physically help her take care of the baby. ’But he does give me money and thing,’ she said. ’I know my child is a Carnival baby, but it does have plenty more people having babies nine months after Carnival,’ she also said. The Ministry of Health does not acknowledge the label ’Carnival baby’ in its reporting and statistics but the statistics are showing that more and more young people are rapidly hopping onto the infectious unprotected sex bandwagon and contracting STDs or getting pregnant. Newly-elected president of the Trinidad and Tobago Medical Association (T&TMA), Dr George Chamely, said there is always an increase in the number of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS right after Carnival. ’The whole ethos of Carnival for our people is one of ’letting go’ of the stress and frustration of the entire year, and enjoying life. We are, as a nation, more healthy in the months leading up to Carnival than at any other time of the year, between the rise in gym attendances and the various group physical activities which invite us to ’get fit for Carnival,’ he said. ’This build-up culminates in the two days in which many are carefree on the streets and with an increase in alcohol consumption during this time, we let our guard down and have sex when we would ordinarily not do so,’ Chamely said in an interview with the Sunday Express. Unfortunately, says Chamely, ’carefree tends to also be careless. The ’Carnival babies’ keep the labour wards in our hospitals busy. This phenomenon is not unique to Trinidad and Tobago but also occurs after Carnival in Brazil, the German ’Beer Festival’ and after College ’spring break’ vacations in the US.’ Between the period 1995 and 2005, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), in their Health Situation Analysis and Trend Summary, noted that in T&T, communicable diseases (including STIs) accounted for 14 per cent of deaths in the 15 to 19-year-old age group. Women, aged 13 to 19, accounted for 15 per cent of live births in 2000. The HIV/AIDS Morbidity and Mortality Report (2000 to 2004) said the reported cases of HIV show the 25 to 34-year-old age group recording the highest numbers of new HIV infections per year followed by the 15 to 24-year-old age group during that period. ’Our advice from the Medical Association is simply that there is nothing wrong with having fun during Carnival, just do so safely and responsibly,’ said Chamely. Gynaecologist Dr Sherene Kalloo said she has noted an increased incidence of STIs in young people during the Carnival period, especially in those between the ages of 16 and 30 . ’This is because more teenagers are engaging in unprotected sex,’ she said, adding that this actually increases by as much as 25 per cent during the period January to March. ’It starts as early as January when the fetes start because more people tend to have unprotected sex at this time’, she said. While condoms protect against most forms of STIs, Kalloo said one could still contract herpes or even the Human Pamplona Virus (HPV) with the use of a condom. ’Lesions could be present on the groin and thighs and wining and grinding on persons could transmit these pathogens,’ she said, adding that ’just dancing with each other, skimpily attired can be dangerous, and that sharing of drinks can transmit the Herpes and Hepatitis virus. There are four new cases of HIV on average per day, mainly among young people, but It’s important that we give young people all the information so they can make an informed choice,’ she said. ’The most important thing to remember is that one should exercise extreme caution by using condoms consistently and correctly every time one engages in sex,’ she said. (Trinidad Express)

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31. January 2010 by admin.

VICE-CHANCELLOR emeritus at the University of the West Indies Prof Rex Nettleford remains unconscious in the intensive care unit of a Washington, USA, hospital after suffering a massive heart attack. According to UWI’s public relations department, the condition of the 76-year-old had not improved after he fell ill on Wednesday night in his hotel room. He is in the US to participate in a fund-raising gala for the university. Jamaica’s ambassador to Washington Anthony Johnson told the Jamaica Gleaner/ Power 106 News that Prof Nettleford was still unconscious when he visited him at noon on Friday. Johnson said doctors told him Nettleford suffered a heart attack. Nettleford, a Jamaican academic and founder of the National Dance Theatre Company, is the vice-chancellor Emeritus of UWI, having previously served as the vice-chancellor of the institution’s Mona Campus in Jamaica from 1996 to 2004. He is widely recognised as one of the Caribbean’s leading intellectuals and was bestowed with the Order of the Caribbean Community in 2008. He was also the recipient of Jamaica’s third highest honour, the Order of Merit, and is a cultural adviser to Prime Minister Bruce Golding. He is the author of several publications and has written extensively on Caribbean folklore and politics.(Trinidad Express) -Denyse Renne

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31. January 2010 by admin.

Special investigation by Camini Marajh

reappointed: Gita Sakal Gita Sakal, the ex-corporate secretary of fallen insurance and energy giant CL Financial, is back. Sakal, who raised some eyebrows with an unauthorised US$5 million payout to herself last March, was quietly returned to the post of corporate secretary at Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd (MHTL) at a meeting of the Dr Euric Bobb-chaired board of directors at Mt Irvine Hotel in Tobago two Fridays ago-January 22. And, in a shocking turn of events, it appears the Government-appointed caretaker management failed to inform Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams of the Sakal appointment, which is likely to challenge Government’s credibility in the $1.5 billion and counting taxpayer bailout. Governor Williams played a key role in shaping Government’s response last January and mapping out a bailout plan to help the stricken CL Financial conglomerate stay afloat. He is the State’s point man, tasked with cleaning up the balance sheet and restoring financial health to the Lawrence Duprey-managed conglomerate, which includes the country’s largest insurance company, CLICO. It was the governor who named the caretaker management teams to the holding company and other distressed assets in the CL Financial Group. Asked to comment on Sakal’s return to Methanol Holdings, which is 57 per cent owned by the CL Financial Group, Governor Williams, on Wednesday, expressed surprise and suggested that perhaps the Sunday Express information was faulty. ’That would surprise me a lot,’ he said, adding, ’I would doubt that very, very much.’ He promised to check into the report and get back to us but up to yesterday, he remained unavailable for comment. ” That would surprise me a lot”- -Governor Ewart Williams Dr Bobb, a prominent and widely respected economist and a former governor of the Central Bank, confirmed the Gita Sakal comeback to the CL Financial group. ’There was an interregnum, and she has been reconciled as corporate secretary,’ he told the Sunday Express last week, noting, however, she would not continue as legal adviser to MHTL. He said she would perform limited duties of corporate secretary. Asked if he considered the appointment a wise move, Bobb said: ’Well those are questions. I don’t even know all the questions. For the time being, until those questions are settled or answered, I think we live in a society where people have the benefit of the doubt pending the determination of any accusation.’ He confirmed the MHTL shareholders’ agreement allows the largest shareholder to appoint the corporate secretary. Defending the controversial appointment, Bobb, who replaced Duprey as chairman of MHTL on March 4 last year, said Sakal was familiar with the organisation and had been performing the duties of corporate secretary for a long time. He said there were ’lots of things to be tidied up, and we need somebody who is already familiar with this to ensure that we don’t leave any stones unturned.’ Which stones exactly he was interested in turning over, Bobb didn’t say. He declined further comment, but the Sunday Express understands the corporate secretary appointment was Sakal’s reward for cooperating with forensic investigators seeking to untangle the web of complex financial transactions connected to reports of corporate greed and malfeasance. Sakal is said to have made the demand for the corporate secretary chair at MHTL after her $16 million-a-year contract as group corporate secretary was terminated by Duprey last April. Sakal had a bruising legal fight with Duprey and was alleged to have played the ’whistleblower role’ in the Central Bank-initiated court action taken to compel Duprey to reverse the February 3, 2009 sale of CL’s 51 per cent interest in CLICO Energy Co Ltd to Proman AG. And while the State-appointed management team may consider it a small price to pay to put Sakal back in her old job at Methanol Holdings, financial and legal analysts say it throws a shadow on Government’s effort to resolve the CL Financial problem. Claude Musaib-Ali, a former managing director at CLICO, who was returned to his old job as a State-hired fix-it man last year, disagreed that the Sakal appointment has the potential to erode further public confidence in the company or the rebuilding exercise started after Central Bank’s intervention last year. Musaib-Ali, who is CLICO’s nominee on the MHTL board, put it this way: ’I don’t know what these dark clouds are. There are so many things swirling around.’ Told specifically about the US$5 million affair, he responded: ’Yeah, well I don’t want to comment on that. I am in CLICO. That is a CL Financial matter.’ Reminded that CLICO is the majority shareholder of MHTL, and he was part of the decision to put in a controversial figure to ensure best corporate governance practices, he claimed the Sakal recommendation came from Rampersad Mootilal, managing director of MHTL and a director on the board. ’You have to speak to him because to answer your questions, I would have to refer to him,’ he said. Pressed for a comment on whether, in his view, it was in the company’s best interest, Musaib-Ali said: ’Let me put it this way, the information was presented to the board. They accepted it. There was no issue of concern. It didn’t arise.’ Was it a concern to him? ’No, it is not,’ he said, adding that ’the board was satisfied that she had worked for the company for a long time. The board accepted her and I think that’s it. We move on.’ But how does the company make the incident go away? According to Musaib-Ali: ’I am not getting involved in those sorts of things?’ And what of his duty to the shareholders of CL Financial and the taxpayers who are funding the bailout? ’Again, those things I would leave because there are always two sides to the story,’ he said. Is it that he believes Sakal’s version of the story? ’I am not saying that. I stay away from those things.’ Is it because he doesn’t think it important? ’Listen to me, at the appropriate time when all the information has been vented, then you draw a conclusion. For the time being, you hear all sorts of things floating about the place, and you can’t act on every statement that is made,’ said Musaib-Ali, declining further comment. Mootilal, for his part, dismissed suggestions of a Sakal return to the boardroom of MHTL. According to him, she never left. ’She never vacated the post of corporate secretary. She was always the corporate secretary.’ He said there was no reason for her to vacate her position at MHTL simply because she had been fired by the parent company, CL Financial. He said the decision was a MHTL board decision. Questioned about the fact that she had not functioned in the position for almost a year and that the Methanol Holdings board was reconstituted after Central Bank’s intervention, he quipped that Sakal was ’on extended vacation’. He didn’t say who approved her vacation leave but noted someone served in a limited role as a recording secretary to the board. Asked who would pay her compensation package, given the fact she was previously on CL Financial’s payroll, Mootilal said the Bobb board agreed ’on a very, very modest fee’. He dismissed suggestions by Musaib-Ali that he played a key role in Sakal’s return to the Pt Lisas-based methanol giant. ’I don’t know if I have all those powers but really, at the end of the day, this is a limited engagement for one year.’ Asked whether the board was concerned about the legal dispute surrounding Sakal’s US$5 million payout to herself, Mootilal said: ’Sure. The matter was raised by the board.’ He said the board adopted ’the general concept of innocent until proven guilty’. He said the position taken after some deliberations was to give ’the individual the benefit of the doubt’. Asked to comment on reports there was some dissatisfaction by some of the foreign directors, Mootilal said: ’I don’t want to get into the deliberations of the board but at the end of the day, there was consensus.’ Was the decision unanimous? Mootilal chose to answer the question this way: ’The board did not vote. The board deliberated and there was consensus.’ Sakal did not pick up several calls made to her mobile and failed to respond to requests for a comment. The US$5 million payback affair - February 4, 2009-CL Financial sells its shares in Clico Energy for US$46.6 million to longtime Lawrence Duprey business partner Proman Holdings. - March 3, 2009-Company Secretary Gita Sakal instructs RBTT to draw a US$5 million draft in favour of Republic Bank for her benefit for value on March 28. The money is part of the disputed sale proceeds. She contends that the money is owed to her. - May 4, 2009-Duprey’s attorney, Lionel Lukhoo, wrote Sakal demanding she return the money forthwith. He contended there was no basis upon which she could have taken the money. He threatened legal action and issued a noon, May 5 deadline for the return of the US$5 million. - Sakal met the issued deadline and paid back the US$5 million MHTL board of directors The Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Ltd Board on January 22 returned Gita Sakal to the corporate secretary chair at the Pt Lisas company, which is listed among the primary assets of the CL Financial Group. Following is a listing of the MHTL board of directors. - Dr Euric Bobb-chairman - Joseph Cassidy-Proman - Rolf Meyer-Ottens-Helm AG - Claude Musaib-Ali-managing director, Clico - Stephan Reimell-MAN Ferrostaal AG - Adalbert Graff-MAN Ferrostaal AG - Rampersad Mootilal-managing director Methanol Holding

(Trinidad Express)

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31. January 2010 by admin.

Wilberne Persaud - Columnist,email:wilbe65@yahoo.comLast week one morning, I woke up to find in my inbox a copy of an open letter from the staff of Air Jamaica Holdings Limited to Prime Minister Bruce Golding, indicating “full support of the initiative presently under way by the Jamaica Air Line Pilots Association (JALPA)”.

It was a moving appeal, a plea to keep alive “the little piece of Jamaica that flies!”

The letter identifies changes experienced over the years: “change in its truest sense; change of management, owners, operating plans and even Government. Today, however, we stand as one united voice to say: ‘It’s ours, our sweat, tears, labour - our family, our heritage and more so our Jamaican pride”.

I must confess to sharing their pain, emotionally, almost like anticipation of a loss in the family. Sometimes in such matters emotion must be suppressed.

Actually, however, there is no need to abandon, or make the case based purely on emotion. Emotion buys no bread at the supermarket. The case can be convincingly made from the bald facts of Air Jamaica as a business - private-sector style - versus Air Jamaica as government supported, yet ultimately taxpayer-funded provider of subventions to the tourism industry.

Effectively, taxpayers fund losses while private tourism interests take the profits. Consider this: Would the IMF insist that the Government abandon or sell off the Tourist Board? What profits does this entity generate, for and to whom?

Who pays for its operations? Which non-Bellevue inmate would purchase it?

Entities such as these exist because of external benefits to society and economy as a whole. The businesses they support provide employment, pay taxes and so on.

From its 1969 inception, Air Jamaica has never been fully, not even adequately capitalised.

This is not a disputed issue.

Furthermore, operationally, Air Jamaica, for several years of its existence, provided profits, performing in an internal bottom-line sense, better than many US airlines. Always, however, with debt service factored in, the airline made a loss - with inadequate capital the only possible outcome.

Yet, Jamaican and foreign travellers alike value the service, the ‘feel’ and pleasant, unique experience flying the national airline generates.

Air Jamaica’s contribution to the economy and people is also not in dispute. Higglers became international travellers, sourcing goods to satisfy the needs of a wide cross section of Jamaicans. Their drive, ingenuity and initiative are legendary, though their behaviours sometimes jolt the sensitivities of business and holiday travellers - not too high a price to pay for the service rendered.

During the 1980s, as today, the multilaterals World Bank, Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF) and others advocated the airline’s closure.

Eventually, pressures led to privatisation.

But the bleeding continued for the same reasons. Our tourism industry required airlift from destinations that would not, on pure bottom-line business decisions, make sense.

In the mid 1980s, this columnist advocated in discussion with Air Jamaica’s finance committee and board, sharing the cost incurred in promoting tourism.

If bread and butter routes - New York, Miami, Toronto - subsidised Los Angeles, Atlanta, Frankfurt and other gateways required for tourism, then taxpayers should not foot the whole bill.

Surely, an acceptable cost-sharing mechanism could be hammered out.

Sadly, the idea was an absolute non-starter. The result: Air Jamaica’s chance of showing a profit scuttled.

If the proposed sale is to be effected, after more than 40 years, some entity will be allowed to run Air Jamaica as a purely private business for the first time at last.

The problem must be fixed.

Successive governments, having decided airlift was a priority for tourism, didn’t reduce state expenditures in other areas to facilitate that decision.

top heavy management

It also appears that the airline operated with a top heavy and costly management structure.

Be that as it may, the Jamaican Government will now absorb Air Jamaica’s debt and, presumably, the company sold for a dollar!

Question is, to whom? How will the sale impact Jamaica’s travelling public that relies heavily on its operation? Will ‘high technology jobs’ afforded Jamaicans by the presence and operations of an international airline disappear? Will external benefits delivered also disappear? What of foreign exchange outflows required for payment to non-Jamaican carriers for travel and freight? Will the Air Jamaica brand be maintained? We don’t know; rumours suggest not.

But, why not sell the company to the staff for one dollar? Attach strings.

The staff themselves, according to their letter, propose some strings.

There should be a public offering to Jamaicans willing to buy into the new company. Its routes must be further rationalised, top-heavy management structure made lean and efficiency become the ultimate operational driving force.

Transparency should be the hallmark of the new entity. Especially at this time of uncertainty, recall and reduction of interest rates on government debt, new and promising vehicles for investment opportunities become attractive.

All redundancy payments should become part of the capital of the new new-Air Jamaica. These monetary entitlements of staff shall become mandatory shareholding. All the higglers who use the airline will presumably be happy to invest, for they know they will find similar accommodation nowhere else. The talent, skills, ingenuity and capital for such an enterprise exist in Jamaica.

The letter, fully accepting change is inevitable, includes this quote: “You are the catalyst of your own change and the pathway of your success - Arise and Stand”.

Borrowing from the Obama campaign and Jamaica’s flag, they say: “We know we can! Indeed Hardships there are, but the land is green and the gold in our national carrier still shines.”

I should like to add a quote from the poem ‘Invictus’ (translation: unconquered), a hand-written copy of which Nelson Mandela kept on his Robben Island prison cell wall. In troubled times he recited some of these lines:

“I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

Air Jamaica has many captains. They alone can’t achieve rescue of an invaluable treasure which, once lost shall, perhaps, never be regained.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Since this column was written, Prime Minister Bruce Golding has said he will consider JALPA’s plea but only if the deal with Caribbean Airlines falls through.

An Air Jamaica plane sits on the tarmac at the Norman Manley International Airport, Kingston. - File

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31. January 2010 by admin.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP):The biggest travel threat facing the world now is passport fraud, according to the chief of Interpol - the millions of stolen documents that could be used by terrorists or criminals to travel worldwide.

Airport body scanners, embraced by many in the aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing, are a misguided solution to travel threats, Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday night.

“The greatest threat in the world is that last year there were 500 million, half a billion, international air arrivals worldwide where travel documents were not compared against Interpol databases,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where 2,500 business and political leaders are gathered in this Alpine resort.

“Right now in our database we have over 11 million stolen or lost passports,” he said. “These passports are being used, fraudulently altered and are being given to terrorists, war criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers.”

The solution, he said, is better intelligence, and better intelligence sharing, among countries.

“You don’t know the motivation behind the person carrying the passport,” he said. If you’re a terrorist, he said, “Are you going to carry explosives that are going to be detected? No.”

Many US airports use the body-scanning machines and airports in other countries are adopting them after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on December 25 on the Detroit-bound flight.

But Noble questioned “the amount of money and resources that go into these (body-scanning) machines.”

He cited a case two weeks ago in a Caribbean country where five people were arrested carrying European passports, but were caught after they were found to be carrying stolen passports, one stolen back in 2001. The five had “definite links to crime, organised crime and human trafficking but no definite links to terrorism,” he said, though he wouldn’t name the country.

recognising the threat

He said US authorities are recognising the threat of passport fraud in 2006, US authorities scanned the Interpol database about 2,000 times, while last year they did so 78 million times. They came up with 4,000 people traveling on stolen or lost passports.

Intelligence experts have cast doubt on the usefulness of the so-called no-fly lists of suspects shared among airports worldwide, saying that criminals can change their names or make simple name-spelling changes that render them untrackable.

“(The lists) are useful but I don’t believe they are the be-all and end-all,” Noble said, adding he was concerned about governments’ efforts to expand them.

Noble, who has expanded Interpol’s efforts to fight terrorism, cybercrime, corruption and maritime piracy in his nearly 10 years at the helm of international police agency Interpol, also had words of warning for people hoping to donate money to Haiti after its devastating earthquake. (Jamaica Gleaner)

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31. January 2010 by admin.

Philip Hamilton, Gleaner WriterRESIDENTS OF the upscale community of Waterworks in St Andrew spent most of yesterday trying to come to terms with a suspected murder-suicide which shattered the usual tranquility in the area.

When our news team visited the area, most persons were not willing to talk and those who did used hushed tones as they reported that a 59-year-old bank manager and his 40-year-old wife, also a banker, were found dead in their house at 12 Broadway Road in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

The residents said they heard several explosions and called the police.

It was subsequently discovered that Everett Lloyd Chito, branch manager of First Global Bank, new Kingston, and his wife, Karla, personal portfolio manager of Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB), had been shot.

investigators report

Police investigators reported that about 12:30 yesterday morning, the two were at home when an argument developed.

Mr Chito reportedly pulled his licensed firearm and shot his wife several times, before shooting himself.

He died on the spot while his wife was taken to the University Hospital of the West Indies where she died while being treated.

The police seized a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver at the scene.

marital problems

It is alleged that the couple had been experiencing problems for some time.

It is further understood that Mr Chito, who had been branch manager at First Global’s New Kingston branch for two years, was seen drinking prior to the incident.

In a release yesterday, JMMB expressed regret at what it described as, “the tragic and untimely passing of a woman full of life and possibilities”.

The management of JMMB also expressed condolences to Mrs Chito’s two children and pledged to provide them with love and support.

There was no comment from the management of First Global up to press time.

The fatally shooting of Mrs Chito continues a worrying trend where women are being murdered in significant numbers.

More than 10 women have been killed so far this year, following on last year when 163 women were murdered across the island. (Jamaica Gleaner)

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31. January 2010 by admin.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP): In a quake-smashed city where hundreds of thousands go to sleep hungry and hurting in sordid street camps, eight-year-old Benoit Wodson has at least a bunk bed, food and friends to play with on a lawn beneath the mango trees.The boy with the big grin and the big scar across his nose wants something more, though: “Can we go look for my mum? Can we go look for my parents?” he asked a worker on Wednesday at the orphanage where he’s been brought.

The smallest survivors of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake are growing into one of the biggest problems in its aftermath.

Countless thousands of children are scattered among Port-au-Prince’s makeshift camps of homeless and many have nobody to care for them, aid workers say, leaving them without protection against disease, child predators and other risks.

“They are extremely vulnerable,” said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children. She said United Nations experts estimate there may be one million youngsters who lost at least one parent in the January 12 quake or are separated from their families.

Some young Haitians are even being released from hospitals with no one to care for them. There just aren’t enough beds.

alone and begging

UN workers had spotted Wodson for several days, alone and begging on the street in the refugee camp that has filled the Champs de Mars plaza before the National Palace.

When a reporter asked him what happened, he said in a matter-of-fact way, “I felt the ground shaking and I just stood there. I saw the National Palace falling down.”

The l’Escale orphanage where Wodson stayed is among a handful of private institutions around Port-au-Prince that the UN children’s agency UNICEF is using for Haitian children separated from parents.

Ringed by a big stone wall, the orphanage had a couple of dozen children before. UNICEF has brought eight since the quake with five more on the way, a tiny fraction of those in need.

UNICEF, Save the Children and the Red Cross have begun registering at-risk children and sending some to orphanages such as l’Escale - the name means ‘in transit’ - where they can be temporarily sheltered, said Bo Viktor Nylund, a senior UNICEF adviser for child protection.

Adoption Procedure

STEP 1: The Adoption Board issues a pre-adoption form which should be completed by all applicants and returned to the Adoption Board by post or in person.

STEP 2: The completed form, when returned, is reviewed by the boards office. An applicant who is considered suitable in the initial review is provided with an application form, a medical form and a listing of documents required. There is usually a period of four weeks for a response to be given from the time the pre-adoption form is received in the office.

STEP 3: Forms are reviewed on completion and additional documents requested. Satisfactory cases are assigned to our assistant adoption officers for further processing.

STEP 4: Parents of children to be adopted and their consent to the adoption is requested.

STEP 5: A home study/assessment is done of the applicant in the form of home visits, interviews, counselling, etc. A written home study is completed at the end of the process. The applicant who lives abroad should submit a home study report.

The applicant is informed of his/her case status after the above is completed. This usually takes four weeks.

STEP 6: The Adoption Board assists applicants to identify children who are available for adoption. In general, an overseas applicant requires a licence and he/she may come to Jamaica to decide on an available child.

STEP 7: Before an adoption is completed, locally placed children and their prospective adoptive parents are supervised by local social workers from the Adoption Board’s office for a period between three and four months.

STEP 8: Cases that appear to be satisfactory are submitted to a review committee of the Adoption Board.

STEP 9: An applicant approved by the committee is required to make a formal application to the court. The applicant’s case worker will provide guidance on this process.

STEP 10: A court hearing is arranged for the parish of residence.

STEP 11: The applicant and the child to be adopted are required to meet with their case worker for a briefing on a day prior to the court hearing.

STEP 12: The applicant and the child to be adopted locally are required to attend the court hearing. The licensed applicant is not usually required to attend court, however, the court can request his/her attendance. The child is always required to attend court and he/she can be accompanied by a guardian.

It is at the court hearing that an application for a licence/adoption order is heard and it is here that it can be granted or denied.

For more information please visit the website of the Child Development Agency - cda.gov.jm. Jamaica Gleaner)

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