This year will be a chal­leng­ing one for gas pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has said.

How could Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine, the woman who could very well be the next Chief Sec­re­tary not un­der­stand that as a sec­re­tary your ac­count­abil­i­ty does not end when you en­sure funds are pro­vid­ed for a project? How can she not see that as sec­re­tary you are ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pens in your di­vi­sion in­clud­ing failed projects and wastage of tax­pay­ers funds?

The up­grad­ed sys­tem now be­ing utilised by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion will im­prove this coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has stat­ed.

If you’re “charis­mat­ic, re­sults-dri­ven” and have ex­pe­ri­ence in com­pet­i­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ments, then this call may be for you.

100 Be­low is a new mega de­part­ment chain in the Caribbean who’s mis­sion state­ment is “De­liv­er­ing great every­day cus­tomer val­ue in our mega fa­cil­i­ties by of­fer­ing of an ever chang­ing as­sort­ment of qual­i­ty, fash­ion­able, brand name and de­sign­er mer­chan­dise at prices gen­er­al­ly $100 and be­low ”

Just days af­ter 12 work­ers were re­trenched from Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) is ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of re­plac­ing per­ma­nent work­ers with con­tract work­ers. Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at TCL’s car park in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day, OW­TU’s chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lin­don Men­doza ac­cused the com­pa­ny of “union-bust­ing” and cal­lous­ness to­wards T&T laws. “I mean that Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd al­though it is a lo­cal com­pa­ny it has for­eign man­age­ment and for­eign own­er­ship in con­trol of the as­sets and op­er­a­tion of TCL. What they are do­ing is that they are dis­re­spect­ing the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and they are dis­re­spect­ing the work­ers and by ex­ten­sion the union, OW­TU.”

Last week was not a good one for the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) as it re­ceived the an­nounce­ment that its cred­it wor­thi­ness had been down­grad­ed by the rat­ing agency Cari­Cris and found it­self be­ing ac­cused by the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of the ma­jor down­stream com­pa­nies of hav­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est and threat­en­ing 30,000 jobs.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) has been down­grad­ed by Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS).

This year has start­ed the same way 2020 be­gun with the sev­er­ing of work­ers in the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor as the State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny fails to reach a gas sup­ply agree­ment with a petro-chem­i­cal com­pa­ny.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing St Lu­cia-based Rock Hard Dis­tri­b­u­tion Lim­it­ed, its lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try were yes­ter­day locked in dis­cus­sions over a tem­po­rary stay of Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­tro­duce a quo­ta and li­cens­ing regime for the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment.

Per­haps the great­est debt of grat­i­tude that the Caribbean has to the late great Gor­don Butch Stew­art is the con­fi­dence that he has giv­en to the re­gion, that al­lows a peo­ple so im­pact­ed by slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship and colo­nial­ism to show the world that we can in­no­vate and gen­er­ate wealth based on our nat­ur­al re­sources, tal­ent and smarts.

An ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion seek­ing to block Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­tro­duce a quo­ta on im­port­ed ce­ment and a pro­pos­al to in­crease the im­port du­ty to 50 per cent is set to be heard by a High Court judge to­day.