Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny sailed for To­ba­go last night, car­ry­ing all car­go that ar­rived at the Port of Port of Spain.

Re­gion­al lender CIBC Caribbean has rolled out a ful­ly dig­i­tal sys­tem that al­lows small en­tre­pre­neurs to open busi­ness ac­counts on­line, cut­ting out pa­per­work and branch vis­its.
The bank’s new Busi­ness Bank­ing Dig­i­tal Client On­board­ing (DCO) fea­ture lets users com­plete the en­tire process from a mo­bile phone, tablet or com­put­er. Busi­ness own­ers can up­load doc­u­ments, ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion and build out their com­pa­ny pro­file at their own pace.
The plat­form is al­ready live in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lu­cia. It is ex­pect­ed to come to five ad­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the com­ing months.
Deepa Bou­caud, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Per­son­al and Busi­ness Bank­ing, CIBC Caribbean, said the sys­tem is built to re­move long-stand­ing bar­ri­ers that have frus­trat­ed small op­er­a­tors try­ing to for­malise their busi­ness­es.
“The new sys­tem is de­signed to re­move tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to open­ing a busi­ness ac­count, pro­vid­ing en­tre­pre­neurs with a faster, sim­pler, and more trans­par­ent on­board­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, re­plac­ing pa­per­heavy re­quire­ments with stream­lined dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tions. En­tre­pre­neurs can up­load re­quired doc­u­ments, ver­i­fy de­tails, and com­plete their busi­ness pro­file from any de­vice, at their own pace,” Bou­caud said.
One of the key changes tar­gets ear­ly-stage and mi­cro busi­ness­es that of­ten strug­gle to pro­duce for­mal fi­nan­cial state­ments. Bou­caud point­ed to the plat­form’s “dy­nam­ic fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty cap­ture,” which al­lows low-risk sole pro­pri­etors to sub­mit es­ti­mat­ed in­come and ex­pense fig­ures dig­i­tal­ly in­stead of au­dit­ed state­ments.
The sys­tem al­so walks ap­pli­cants through ju­ris­dic­tion-spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, re­duc­ing er­rors and com­pli­ance gaps across dif­fer­ent mar­kets.
In­ter­nal­ly, the bank said the up­grade tight­ens An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing con­trols, im­proves da­ta qual­i­ty and cuts pro­cess­ing time. It al­so lays the ground­work for mul­ti-own­er on­board­ing, part­ner­ships, mer­chant ser­vices and broad­er prod­uct of­fer­ings.

​I en­joyed two won­der­ful Car­ni­val days of cathar­sis with the Bel­mont Ex­ot­ic Styl­ish Sailors (DBESS). Ac­cord­ing to one dic­tio­nary mean­ing, cathar­sis, a noun, is the process of re­leas­ing, and there­by pro­vid­ing re­lief from, strong or re­pressed emo­tions. That be­ing said, play­ing in a band such as DBESS, which reg­is­tered this year in the TTC­BA (T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion) mi­ni band cat­e­go­ry, is a change from pre­vi­ous years when they were in the small band cat­e­go­ry.

In a ges­ture that blend­ed com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing with cul­tur­al rev­er­ence, of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion (ED­COPS) paid trib­ute to two of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­dur­ing ca­lyp­so stal­warts ear­li­er this month, pre­sent­ing them with their “flow­ers” while they can still en­joy their fra­grance.

If I had to ar­gue my one grouse with our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, it would be its fail­ure to de­vel­op a well-round­ed child. It would seem that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is en­gi­neered to­wards train­ing chil­dren to sit ex­am­i­na­tions. There is very lit­tle time or en­er­gy ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing prop­er life skills that can equip a child for life out­side of the class­room or ex­am­i­na­tion hall. When com­pared to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, it is easy to de­ter­mine how bad­ly we fall short.