The Trinidad Guardian -Online Edition Ver 2.0

Planning Ministry 8 years behind

And the madness continues...

When does your madness become an embarrassment? Is it when the Ministry of Planning and Development, without any sense of shame, issues a statement (statement issued on February 18) to say that only 39 per cent of our citizens live on US$2 a day and not more, as reported by the UNDP.

Imagine you would draw attention again to the fact that two out of every five citizens in our country live on less than TT$12 a day. But it gets worse.

They also had the gall to say that the only data available was from 1997, which was eight years ago, and they would “guess” (my word) that things are better now.

Mr Minister, how can you really expect me to think you care about poverty when your most current information is eight years old? If you were serious, you would have the name and address of every person living in poverty and a plan to lift them out of it by a set date.

What is so difficult about that?

Some more Trini madness...

Some weeks ago, I asked readers to identify interactive Trinidadian Web sites. One reader wrote me about the Web site of the UNC which can be found at www.unc.org.tt. I found a well put together Web site with discussion groups etc.

Visitors can leave comments; discuss policy, etc in an online forum. I was disappointed not to be able to access a list of MPs or any history/details of election results etc, but I did like the downloadable Freedom of Information form.

Nice touch.

In order to be politically correct, I went to the PNM’s Web site at http://www.pnm.org.tt/ only to find that the page wouldn’t load. I used Google to find the PNM’s Web site, but no luck.

That was February 27 and it still isn’t back up. So there we have it people. The party that claims to want to lead us to 2020 doesn’t have a working Web site. And evidently, they don’t think it’s a big issue otherwise they would have had it up in 24 hours.

Is that madness or what?

PQT’s awards for excellence

My first award goes to the Barrackpore police who ticketed 23 people for not wearing seat belts as reported in the Guardian on March 12. Now that is 2020 action.

My second award goes to the new T&T Central Statistical Office Web site at www.cso.gov.tt. All we need is annual data rather than five-year-old stuff and we will be on track for 2020.

My third award goes to our Central Bank for a well put together Web site at www.central-bank.org.tt.

For a comparison, look at the Bank of England at www.bankofengland.co.uk.

Commission of Enquiry for BWIA?

My column last week on the outrageous amount of money BWIA needs brought lots of very interesting e-mails. Thank you every one who wrote in. In particular, I’d like to thank Simon Kelshall who has done a lot of research to dig out these facts. Just look at the table he sent me.

Costs

BWIA costs, as a percentage of the average of Jet Blue and Southwest costs...

Wages and benefits 84%

Fuel 119%

Aircraft rentals 283%

Maintenance materials and repairs 188%

Agency commissions 550%

Marketing 59%

Landing Fees 150%

Depreciation 282%

All other 116%

TOTAL Operating expense 132%

His information comes from the published annual reports of the various airlines which can be found at http://www.southwest.com/investor_relations/swaar02.pdf (page 34 of 85) and

http://www.jetblue.com/ar2002/10k.html (page 37 of 149).

BWIA results, of course, are not available online, but can be found in their hard copy annual results.

Now this amazing table must make one ask some very hard questions, in particular, why does it cost BWIA nearly three times what the other airlines pay to rent aircraft and nearly twice as much to maintain them? Would the fact that ILFC is a totally-owned subsidiary of AIG, which had two directors on the BWIA board, have anything to do with it?

Using conservative estimates, these overruns come to at least TT$400 million in one year so we are not talking about dolly house money here.

Surely, board members such as Mr Aleong, Mr Narinesingh, Mr Persad and Mr Edoo, all well respected business leaders, must have found out these publicly available figures for themselves and asked some very hard questions? Where are the answers?

Is it that the only way we will get the truth about BWIA is by having a full-fledged, independent Commission of Enquiry?

Whether BWIA is closed or continues to operate, there is too much taxpayer’s money unanswered for. After all we went after Johnny O’Halloran for only $2 million and here we are talking hundreds of millions.

Just a thought.