Naz­ma Muller

The of­fi­cial Web site for the 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions was shut down yes­ter­day af­ter the T&T Guardian point­ed out it con­tained nu­mer­ous fac­tu­al, spelling and gram­mat­i­cal er­rors. Kendal Fontenelle, di­rec­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, which was re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the site, said yes­ter­day: "We took note of your con­cerns and we are go­ing to take down the site and give it a thor­ough edit­ing."

The con­tent of the site was not writ­ten by the de­part­ment, Fontenelle said. "It was ac­tu­al­ly writ­ten by some­one who is a lec­tur­er at one of the ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions," he said. He re­fused to di­vulge the lec­tur­er's name. The site would be back up as soon as edit­ing was done, he added. He es­ti­mat­ed the sec­re­tari­at would need at least 48 hours to ed­it it.

The site, www.tnt50.gov.tt, pro­claimed on its home page that it was in ho­n­our of the "50th In­de­pen­dence of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go." In fact, 2012 is the 50th an­niver­sary of the sin­gle in­de­pen­dence that oc­curred on Au­gust 31, 1962. Trinidad and To­ba­go on­ly be­came a re­pub­lic in 1976. Oth­er state­ments in­fu­ri­at­ed cit­i­zens, such as the ref­er­ence to slav­ery in the brief sec­tion, ti­tled: "Who We Are."

The sen­tence reads: "At the time, the is­lands' rich sug­ar in­dus­try re­quired the im­por­ta­tion of labour­ers from Africa." It is fol­lowed by an equal­ly be­wil­der­ing one: "Af­ter the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in 1834, the British colonis­ers turned to­wards Asia to se­cure its labour force in the form of in­den­ture­ship of In­di­ans on May 30, 1845."

The home page de­scribes the site as "An Of­fi­cial Web­site of the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad & To­ba­go." It says a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, chaired by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my, Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, is re­spon­si­ble for im­ple­ment­ing in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions. Tewarie's own mes­sage on the Web site con­tained gram­mat­i­cal er­rors, styl­is­tic howlers and bad punc­tu­a­tion.

It read in part: "This an­niver­sary is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone on [sic] our na­tion's his­to­ry and every cit­i­zen should feel a spe­cial pride in their per­son­al con­tri­bu­tion to what we have achieved since our Na­tion­al Flag was hoist­ed at twelve mid­night, Au­gust 31st 1962. "On that oc­ca­sion we im­mor­tal­ized the red, white and black. Rep­re­sent­ing in the red, the vi­tal­i­ty of the land and peo­ple, the warmth and en­er­gy of the sun, and courage and friend­li­ness of a new na­tion.

"In the white we take in­to ac­count the sea which sur­rounds us, the sea [sic], the pu­ri­ty of na­tion­al as­pi­ra­tions, and the equal­i­ty of all men, and through the black we sym­bol­ize the strength, uni­ty and pur­pose, and the nat­ur­al re­sources of the land." Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta of his­to­ry at UWI, Brid­get Br­ere­ton, who is abroad, com­ment­ed on the site by e-mail in re­sponse to a query from the T&T Guardian, say­ing she had no­ticed "se­ri­ous in­ac­cu­ra­cies" in the his­tor­i­cal part of the site.

De­scrib­ing the First Peo­ples whom Christo­pher Colum­bus en­coun­tered on his third voy­age to the Amer­i­c­as, the site said: "Trinidad and To­ba­go was orig­i­nal­ly in­hab­it­ed by the Tain­os (Arawaks) and Kali­na­gos (Caribs)."

More facts

The site's claim on the first peo­ple is con­tro­ver­sial, since his­to­ri­ans can­not say with cer­tain­ty what the orig­i­nal in­hab­i­tants of these is­lands called them­selves 7,000 years ago. At the time of Colum­bus's ar­rival in 1492, it has been stat­ed there were Lokono, She­baio, Nepuyo, Yao, Kali­na­pago­to and oth­er un­named tribes liv­ing in T&T. The Taino did not live in Trinidad or To­ba­go and they were not Arawaks.