Moontown

Jagdeo, in addressing the nation on January 1, said in education, on top of previously recognised priorities such as literacy, special attention will be paid to science and technology, and the expansion of technical and vocational education.

Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo. AFP PHOTO

“We are also working on a major project to computerise all secondary schools in Guyana. We are keenly aware that sustained concentration within the classroom maximises learning,” the president added.

He noted that, cognizant of the role good nutrition plays in improving concentration, especially in children, his government will spend GY$800 million (US$4 million) on a country-wide school-feeding programme, which he said is part of the efforts to improve performance in the educational system.

Turning his attention to health, Jagdeo announced that all public hospitals will be required to enter into a service contract with the Ministry of Health.

“These institutions will be held accountable for the provision of quantifiable and verifiable standards of health care deliverables…. further, the quality of service provided by all medical service providers, both private and public, will be reviewed to ensure conformity with the Health Facilities Licensing Act,” the president outlined

In the area of housing, he said an additional 6,000 house lots will be allocated, to citizens “and attention will be paid to updating and more effectively enforcing our building codes.”

Jagdeo also announced a rigorous legislative agenda to protect vulnerable groups in Guyana society.

“Specifically, in the case of children, we have already enacted legislation on childcare, and the status, adoption, and protection of children.

“During the New Year, we plan to bring into law the remaining elements of this comprehensive legislative framework, including in such areas as childcare and development services, custody, contact, guardianship and maintenance, and sexual offences,” he said.

He added that plans are to roll out further a national foster care programme and strengthen the childcare and protection agency.

“These initiatives, taken together with our policy on domestic violence and our training programmes for single parents and vulnerable youth, which will benefit some 4,000 persons this year, will help to ensure that more Guyanese are empowered to live a more fulfilling life,” Jagdeo said. (Caribnet)

“If we have to close the basic industries in Guayana, because the Guri (reservoir) is drying up, well we have to close them,” Electricity Minister Angel Rodriguez said in an interview with financial daily El Mundo.

Energy and Petroleum Minister Angel Rodriguez. AFP PHOTO

“We have to avoid the reservoir drying up completely.”

The Guri, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams, close to the Orinoco river, supplies about two-thirds of the South American oil-producing nation’s electricity, but is at dangerously low levels, officials say.

President Hugo Chavez’s government has imposed electricity rationing across the nation, from Caracas shopping-malls to the state-owned heavy industries in Guayana state that consume around a quarter of the nation’s power output.

But after drastic cuts already at aluminum smelters Venalum and Alcasa, plus steel mill Sidor, the industries may need to be shut altogether to ease strain on the system, Rodriguez told the newspaper.

“In other countries, they have closed industries. So if we, because of the emergency situation, have to close industries, ministries, and change working hours, we will have to. And the Guayana basic industries form part of this.”

The minister gave no timetable for taking a decision on closing the basic industries.

The Chavez government blames an unprecedented drought, and soaring demand during five years of economic growth from 2004-2008, for the strain on the power-grid.

But critics say negligence and lack of investment during Chavez’s nearly 11 years in power are to blame.

Sidor, which was nationalized from Argentina-based Ternium in 2008, said last week it was installing five generators to compensate for power-rationing affecting its production. It has not quantified the impact on output, which was forecast at 3.61 million tonnes of liquid steel for 2009.

Basic Industries Minister Rodolf Sanz said last month that 558 megawatts in consumption would be saved in the state-run heavy industry, mainly by closing two furnaces at Sidor, and reducing output at Venalum and Alcasa.

He said ouptut would fall by nearly 40 percent, or around 14,000 tonnes a month, at Venalum. The company is 80 percent owned by the government and 20 percent by a consortium of Japanese companies Showa Denko, Marubeni, Kobe Steel, Sumitomo Chemical, Mitsubishi Materials and Mitsubishi Aluminum.

At Alcasa, the government shut two production lines, cutting output by about 1,600 tonnes a month, officials said.

Venezuela’s mining sector shrank 10.2 percent in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to estimates by the Central Bank.

Officials say Venezuela’s oil industry, the bedrock of its economy, has been relatively untouched by the power cuts. (Caribnet)

Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal was in the east African country on a preaching tour but intelligence officials were afraid his speeches would have encouraged radicalism in a country that has suffered two al-Qaeda-linked attacks.

“The minister in charge of immigration has declared him as an unwanted immigrant. We don’t want him in this country,” police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told Reuters.

“He has known terrorism links and was once jailed in the UK for five years. They are so annoyed with him that they can’t even grant him a transit visa on his way to Kingston, Jamaica.”

Faisal was also deported from Britain in 2007 for preaching racial hatred and asking his audiences to kill Jews, Hindus and westerners.

“From what he says, he was coming to preach,” Kiraithe said.

“The contacts he was maintaining, according to our intelligence, are not the best, are not in our national interests. The contacts were … in some neighbouring countries.”

Attacks in Kenya include a 1998 bomb at the US embassy in Nairobi, a hotel bombing and a botched missile attack on an Israeli airliner leaving Kenya’s Mombasa airport in 2002.

Some Kenyan Muslim clerics demonstrated against Faisal’s arrest on Sunday and said he was going to preach on greater autonomy for Muslims.

“Of course, he did not come here to appease the Kenyan government or the police, but to do his job,” said Sheikh Yahya Mohamed Atie, a retired army captain and a member of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque.
“He was calling Muslims to have more freedom. Of course, he is against democracy.” (Caribnet)

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) — Cuba denounced as “anti-terrorist paranoia” new US security measures for air travelers from the island and 13 other countries, but passengers waiting to fly from Havana said on Monday thorough checks before heading to the United States were nothing new.

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guards the doors to a new 121,700-sq-ft (11,306-square-meter) passenger security screening area is unveiled to the media. AFP PHOTO

The measures call for inspecting baggage and patting down US-bound passengers from four countries — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria — that the US government considers state sponsors of terrorism and 10 other “countries of interest.”

Granma, the newspaper for the ruling Communist Party, called the measures a “desperate directive” that was “part of the (US) anti-terrorist paranoia.”

The US Transportation Security Administration announced the increased screening on Sunday following a botched Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian man on a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit.

US officials believe he was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen.

Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria are listed by the US State Department as nations that sponsor terrorism. Cuba has long complained about its inclusion on the list, saying the terrorism accusation is false.

The 10 “countries of interest” include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Increased security measures at Havana’s airport could not be seen on Monday, but long lines of people waited to catch planes to Miami.

Most said they were heading back to the United States after holiday visits to family in Cuba.
Due to the long-standing US trade embargo against Cuba, Americans are generally banned from visiting the island just 90 miles (145 km) from Key West, Florida, but US President Barack Obama lifted travel restrictions for Cuban Americans last year.

There are no direct commercial flights between the countries, which have had bad relations since Cuba’s 1959 revolution, but there are many charter flights.

“I don’t think Cuba is a terrorist country, nor does it support terrorism,” said Carmen, a Cuban exile living in Florida who chose not to give her full name.

But, she said, “the screening for we Cubans is normal, they always do it.”

Ariadna Fernandez, also part of Florida’s Cuban exile community, said she approved of the new security measures.

“I don’t criticize the new inspections; on the contrary, I support them. It’s the best thing they can do for all the bad intentions they have had there (in the United States),” she told Reuters.

Linda Cubela said she expected more checks when her flight got to Miami.

“They’ve always given Cubans extra checks when we arrive in Miami. Maybe the checks help improve relations between the United States and Cuba,” she said. (Caribnet)

A LIGHT earthquake shook up parts of North Trinidad on Monday night.

According to the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, the earthquake was north of the Paria Peninsula and was felt in Glencoe and Westmoorings. There were also reports that it was felt in Petit Valley and Maracas Valley, St Joseph.

The event occurred at about 11.36 p.m. and was located at 11.06 degrees North and 62.16 degrees West.

The magnitude was 4.4 and the depth was 94 km. No injuries or damage to property were reported.

Juhel Browne juhel.browne@trinidadexpress.com

People filing complaints against persons in public life such as a Government ministers will not have to swear to a statutory declaration identifying their names, addresses and telephone numbers and the exact nature of the complaint.

This controversial provision which was originally proposed in the Integrity in Public Life (Amendment) Bill 2009 and met much resistance from the Opposition, some Independent senators and people outside of Parliament was withdrawn by the Government, before the new legislation was passed by the Senate yesterday.

The bill was passed even though President George Maxwell Richards is yet to appoint a new Integrity Commission after the members he appointed last year resigned within an 11-day period after being sworn into office.

Speaking with reporters during the tea break of yesterday’s Senate sitting after the legislation was passed, Attorney General John Jeremie confirmed a key change in the amendments to the bill passed by the Upper House yesterday was the removal of the proposed ’complaints procedure which subjected the individual person, the man on the street, trying to make a complaint to the Integrity Commission to be burdened of filling in a statutory declaration.’

’I think that is, that was, a major source of concern in the national community. We did not agree with it and after hearing from the independents (senators), we took it out, and there was some other consequential changes which were required to be made to meet some specific concerns of the various members on the Independent benches and we did that,’ Jeremie said.

The Independent senators raised specific concerns yesterday during the two-hour committee stage during which the bill was examined clause by clause.

In response to questions raised by Independent senators Dana Seetahal and Helen Drayton, Jeremie indicated that Government will be reviewing exactly who should qualify as a person in public life under the law as, he said, there are people who fall under the net of the act who should not, and others who should be included in it. (Trinidad Express)