THE GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSALS FOR A CASHLESS SOCIETY

 The TT Government has proposed through its Minister of Finance that the country should go cashless. At first without thinking I thought that this might be a good idea. But then I started thinking, who exactly will benefit from the country going cashless? Answer: the banks. Let me give you an example: let's say that I go now to get my haircut and I pay the barber with a $100 bill. He puts it in his pocket and then uses it to pay, say, his grocery bill. The grocery store owner then uses it to pay a supplier - and so on, My original $1oo bill is used umpteen times.

So? What happens every time my original debt of $100 is paid via, say, Linx? Somebody (usually the payee - the person receiving the money) is charged 1.5% by his/her bank. If you multiply this out you will see that my original $100 has been consumed by the bank (or banks).

So again I ask: who benefits? Probably the question should be: who benefits besides the banks? And yet the very powerful Minister of Finance thinks that going cashless is the way to go! Why?

Makes you think, doesn't it? Why does he think that this is a good idea? Indeed, all sorts of questions and suspicions arise - some of them invite downright defamatory answers and some of the suspicions are (beside being defamatory) downright unreasonable. Yet the basic question "why'" remains unanswered.

If politics and government is about making life better for the people, in one sentence (because if you can't say it in one sentence you can't say it at all) why do you think that you will be better off by the country going cashless?

THAT PARIA "INVESTIGATION" - A QUESTION OF RACE?

 Tucked in a corner on page 15 of the Express of Tuesday 10yh September, 2024 was a story about the 3 divers who had lost their lives some 4 years ago while doing a job for Paria Fuel Trading Co. Ltd. in Pointe-a-Pierre. What struck me about this story is that the so-called "investigation" into the men's deaths is still going on! I mean, how long does it take to do such an investigation? From all the newspaper reports at the time it seemed that the facts were fairly straight forward:

Four men were on a job working for Paria under the sea. 

There war an accident and the men were trapped. One managed to escape.

No rescue mission was mounted or allowed to be mounted. According to newspaper reports authorities actually intervened to prevent a rescue.

The men died when their oxygen ran out some 4 days after the accident.

Now, all of this is from the newspaper reports at the time. So? It seems a fairly simple  matter. And yet, there has been no conclusion to the alleged "investigation" some 4 years after the accident and absolutely no compensation has been paid to the families of the men who died.

By the way, all the men who were killed as well as the one who escaped were of Indian extraction. All of the people who make  or are supposed to make  or authorize the "investigation" are black (or  of African extraction). Is that a coincidence? If it was the other way around would it still be okay that the "investigation" has taken this long and no compensation whatsoever has even been offered to be paid to the families of the victims? Putting it bluntly, is race behind what is clearly an unacceptable situation? If you think that this is a stretch, then can you offer a different and logical explanation? Is anybody responsible for this accident? Is it unreasonable for persons to conclude that race has played a part in the delay? 

Who exactly is responsible for the delay for concluding the "investigation"? Because, at the end of the day, it will be one person. What is his/her race? We are always hesitant as a society to cry "race", but sometimes if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then its kind of obvious that it is a duck.