St. John’s — Sept. 8, 2010 — LIAT’s management announces that it is moving to put in place measures for implementation of a new LIAT/LIALPA Collective Bargaining Agreement.

This follows the July 05, 2010 ruling of a three-man arbitration panel headed by retired Barbadian jurist Sir Leroy Inniss QC, concerning a new Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Company and its pilots.

LIAT’s CEO Brian Challenger noted that while certain matters are still being clarified, the arbitration award nevertheless provides the opportunity for a new chapter in the often acrimonious relationship between LIAT and LIALPA.

“We believe that that the provisions of the arbitration ruling provide both parties with a blueprint for resolving the many issues that have traditionally plagued our relationship,” Challenger said.

“Based on the ruling from the arbitration panel and following several exchanges of communication with LIALPA we have prepared a draft Collective Agreement which we hope will form the basis for review by both sides and allow for an early signature of the agreement once the remaining areas of clarification are resolved.

“We have already taken action to implement those aspects of the award which had a clear timeline for implementation and we are putting in place the mechanisms to facilitate the necessary administrative and logistical changes, some of which are quite significant to our operations, in order to achieve earliest possible implementation of the agreement,” Mr. Challenger added.

Challenger noted that the company has been in communication with LIALPA with regard to the possible signing of the new Collective Agreement and it is hoped that planned discussions with LIALPA would enable an early identification of a date to sign the agreement.

The arbitration panel was set up following an agreement brokered by the Prime Ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in July 2009 in an effort to settle long-standing industrial relations issues between the Company and its pilots.

LIAT is one of the leading Caribbean airlines. It is owned by regional shareholders, with the major shareholders being the Governments of Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. More information about LIAT may be found at www.liat.com.

NEW YORK — JetBlue Airways Corp. said Wednesday that it will begin offering service from New York and Boston to the Turks & Caicos Islands in the Caribbean in February.

On Feb. 17, it will begin flying daily to Providenciales, the most populous of the islands, from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

On Feb. 19, it will begin weekly Saturday flights from Boston Logan International to Providenciales. That service will end in April and run in following years only in peak tourist season — November to April.

JetBlue expects to start selling tickets for the new Turks & Caicos service in October.

Source Photo: Bahamas Weekly

NASSAU, The Bahamas — The Bahamas Government condemns all forms of human trafficking and is making preparations to create public awareness on such issues, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

On Thursday, September 2, 2010, the Hon Brent Symonette, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration met with Amy Rofman, Officer of the United States Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking of Persons, to discuss the 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report on The Bahamas.

Under the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), the United States Secretary of State is required to submit to Congress, an annual report referred to as the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report. The main objective of the Report is to stimulate action and to create partnerships around the world in the fight against modern day slavery.

Since the 2009 TIP Report, countries established as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims of severe forms of trafficking are included in the Report and are assigned to three tiers.

The Bahamas is classified as a Tier 2 country; the Report alleges that The Bahamas is a destination for Caribbean nationals, particularly of Haitian and Jamaican nationality, who are subject to forced labour and forced prostitution by trafficking perpetrators.

Haitian trafficking victims have been noted, as targets for forced labour in agriculture, domestic service or forced prostitution, while Jamaican and other foreign women are reportedly subject to forced prostitution. Based on the contents of the Report, luring mechanisms such as offers of employment serve as a means to facilitate acts of human trafficking, particularly in the latter case.

“Despite the accusations, The Bahamas condemns all forms of human trafficking and maintains that by virtue of Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, incidences of employer coercion cannot by itself be termed as an office of human trafficking, nor is it evidence that persons are being trafficked,” the Ministry said.

It added, “The Bahamas, while noting the recommendation that it ought to take steps to identify possible trafficking victims among migrants attempting to enter The Bahamas illegally, queries this recommendation within the context of illegal migration, which does not provide law enforcement with advance notice.

“Additionally, The Bahamas queries the critique that the Government made minimal efforts to prosecute trafficking offenders considering that under Protocol, human trafficking offenses are victim driven and that successful prosecutions in human trafficking cases require the positive participation of such victims.”

Given the context of the provisions of Bahamian legislation, which is acknowledged in the Report as affording immunity to and protection of trafficking victims, the Ministry said it should be noted that if victims of trafficking were to be identified, the issue is always whether or not they will be prepared to provide the evidence necessary to sustain a prosecution.

“The Ministry of Social Development is already making preparation to create public awareness on the issue of human trafficking,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Source: Bahamas Weekly

MIAMI — Tropical Storm Igor has formed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands and has top sustained winds of near 40 mph (65 kph).

Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Wednesday that Igor was moving toward the west near 8 mph (13 kph). The center of the storm is expected to pass south of the Cape Verde Islands by Thursday.

A tropical storm watch has been issued for the southern Cape Verde Islands.

Some slow strengthening is expected over the next two days.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Wednesday September 8, 2010 – In the midst of a battle to have a review or complete scrapping of UK’s controversial Air Passenger Duty (APD) which increases in another two months, regional tourism has been dealt another tax blow.

The German government has implemented an airline ticket tax that will, like the APD, see some of the highest amounts being paid by those travelers coming to the Caribbean.

From September 3rd, tickets bought for travel beginning January 1st and onward, attracted a tax of €8 (US$10) for travel to 52 European destinations, €25 (US$31) for destinations in Asia and Africa, and €45 (US$57) to all other destinations, including those in the Caribbean.

The new flight levy was introduced ahead of a proposed budget designed to reduce government’s €80 billion (US$101 billion) deficit. Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had said Cabinet agreed that the measure would go into effect even before next year’s start date in order to prevent “a rush in ticket-buying aimed at pre-empting the tax”.

Just as UK airlines criticised the APD, German carriers aren’t welcoming the new airline tax either. And regional tourism officials will be just as concerned.

In Antigua and Barbuda where attempts to attract German tourists have not been as successful as officials would like, the Antigua Hotels and Tourism Association (AHTA) General Manager Neil Forrester has admitted that the new tax “certainly won’t help” that cause.

“The German outbound market was actually growing after the recession but this could have a slowing effect on that,” he told a local newspaper. “While the visitors that we’re getting from Germany are more of an affluent type of visitor, who probably wouldn’t even notice $50 difference, it’s certainly not going to help build our visitation from Germany.”

And Barbados’ Tourism Minister Richard Sealy has already expressed concern about the introduction of the tax.

“I am certain that other members of the European Union may look to do likewise if we simply sit silent,” he said, as he also supported his regional counterparts who have their hands full in Britain as they lobby the government and other officials there on the APD.

Representatives from six Caribbean islands are in London with the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO). The delegation includes Tony Johnson, Jamaica’s High Commissioner to London; Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett; John Lynch, Director of Tourism in Jamaica; St Lucia’s Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation, Senator Allen Chastanet; Hugh Anthony Arthur, Barbados High Commissioner; Senator Richard Skerritt, Minister of Tourism and International Transport in St Kitts and Nevis; Glynis Roberts, Grenada’s Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation; CTO Chairman and Antigua and Barbuda’s Tourism Minister John Maginley; and CTO Secretary General Hugh Riley.

They will wrap up their talks today.

The APD will increase on November 1st. Based on the band into which Caribbean countries are placed – the third highest of the four bands – those travelling to the region from the UK in economy class will pay £75 (US $115) from that date, up from £50 (US$77), while the levy for premium economy, business and first-class passengers to the region will move from £100 (US$154) to £150 (US$291).

Source: 360 News

Wheat Free Communion Wafers

FROM South America to the Mediterranean, and Africa to the Caribbean, millions of Catholics across the globe have reason to be grateful to this Bolton doctor.

Dr Kieran Moriarty, pictured left, an expert in digestive disorders at the Royal Bolton Hospital, has enabled about 10 million believers from around the world to take part in a key part of their worship.

The consultant’s ground-breaking research prompted the Pope himself to change the Church’s laws to enable the millions of Catholics who suffer from coeliac disease to break the bread.

Before his intervention, the Catholic church insisted the communion wafer, taken by the one billion members of the religion when they celebrate mass, must contain wheat.

This meant coeliacs, who suffer from an intolerance to wheat, could not take part in the fundamental part of the service.

But, after Dr Moriarty sent his research to church leaders back in 1995, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, changed the Catholic law to allow gluten-free wafers.

And now, the top doctor will meet the Pope as a guest at the Queen’s reception for Benedict XVI in Edinburgh next week.

Dr Moriarty said: “He changed the law based on my research so if I get to talk to him I’ll remind him of that.

“I was invited to an event two years ago, but couldn’t make it, and tried to ask a question of the Pope at a lecture in 1988 but was too far away.

“This is another chance and I’m looking forward to it.”

He has had other brushes with the Pope, as well as his name often being mentioned in The Vatican circles for his research into coeliacs and communion.

A copy of his CD of Irish Ballads, released in 2002, ended up in the hands of Pope John Paul II.

Dr Moriarty, a practising Catholic, was put forward to meet Pope Benedict by acting chief executive of the Royal Bolton Lesley Doherty when the trust was contacted to see if there was anyone suitable to attend the reception.

The doctor, who is part of Royal Bolton’s annual pilgrimage to Lourdes, then received an invitation last month and will go to Holyrood on Thursday, September 16, for the event.

It will be the first engagement in the Pope’s visit to the UK, after the head of the Catholic Church was invited here by the Queen.

Dr Moriarty, who enjoys singing, has rubbed shoulders with the Royal Family before, after being recognised with a CBE in the New Year Honours List in 2002.

He said: “I met Prince Charles, which was good, but I’ve never met the Queen.

“The opportunity to meet the Queen is a big honour, the opportunity to be at a reception with the Queen and the Pope is a double honour.”

Source: This is Lacashire

During the last fortnight, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent & the Grenadines has circulated what many might have found a curious document to be emanating from a Prime Minister’s office, and certainly one more reminiscent of the days of intense ideological confrontation of the mid-1970s into the 1980s.

In it he declares the existence of a foreign-local linkage designed to “destabilize” his government as new general elections draw near, most likely towards the end of this year. The local link is said to be the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), and the foreign link a combination of United States and British-based personnel and organizations hostile to the domestic and foreign policy arrangements of Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP) government.

And he draws a connection between their activities and the activities of various agencies out of the United States which sought to destabilize the government of Michael Manley after he set out on the path of democratic socialism for Jamaica.

Gonsalves claims that the American group, CoHabitat and the British-based group Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) have embedded themselves with the New Democratic Party, using as their main connection former Prime Minister James Mitchell, whom Gonsalves fought vigorously between the 1998 election won by the NDP by a slim margin, and the 2001 election in which the Unity Labour Party triumphed for the first time. The ULP repeated its earlier victory in 2005. But there can be no doubt that the intense pressure, involving the intermediation of Caricom governments between 1998 and 2001, which Gonsalves placed on Mitchell during that period, left a bitter taste in the latter’s mouth.

The NDP, led by former Caribbean Development Bank official and economist, Arnhim Eustace, but undoubtedly with the active support of Sir James, turned the tables on Gonsalves in the referendum last November on a new constitution for the country, which Gonsalves seems to have believed would have had the support of the opposition. He felt betrayed when the support given by the opposition in the House of Assembly when the matter was first introduced was not sustained.

The decisive defeat of the ULP by the NDP, by a margin of 55% to 44%, virtually the same kind of majority by which the ULP had won the last two elections, undoubtedly came as a surprise to Gonsalves, and in a return to earlier times, has led to increasing bitterness between the two parties, as new elections draw near. Gonsalves now claims that the external interventions by CoHabitat and the SCL are deliberately designed to create an atmosphere of fear for the future of the country as a democracy, and for the possible intervention of Venezuela in St Vincent at Gonsalves’ behest, leading to further interventions by Libya and Iran, countries with which the government has struck up close relationships as it seeks to advance critical development projects.

One of these projects, the construction of a new airport to permit St Vincent to entertain larger aircraft, a dream of most leaders of St Vincent for many years, has created internal dissent as the government has sought to acquire land for this purpose, and Gonsalves accuses CoHabitat of whipping up this dissent for the electoral benefit of the NDP. On the other hand, he has asserted that Sir James Mitchell is a member of the Board of SCL, a claim which Mitchell has not denied. Mitchell would no doubt hark back to the mid 1970s and ’80s, in particular, during and after the reign of the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada, when it was clearly the case that the conservative parties of which the NDP was one, and the socialist or social democratic parties of the region linked respectively with European conservative parties in the International Democratic Union and the European Social Democratic parties in the Socialist International. In addition, he would insist that Gonsalves himself had no objection to establishing strong external linkages with the then world socialist system headed by the Soviet Union, and exemplified in the Caribbean by the close links of socialist parties with Cuba. He no doubt takes the view that Gonsalves should not now have any objection, in principle, to assistance from ideological allies from outside.

Mtichell therefore, not unlike the late Sir John Compton who, in his last fling at the polls, drew Taiwan into St Lucia’s elections, now seeks to fortify the lead which the NDP would seem to have gained over the ULP in the referendum, by external connections known to be skilled at successfully electioneering in other countries. It is alleged that the SLC gave substantial assistance to Prime Minister Denzil Douglas in St Kitts’ recent elections, and Mitchell would argue that Douglas’ St Kitts Labour Party has always been taken to be of the same political ilk as Gonsalves’ ULP.

Reports emanating from St Vincent seem to suggest that Gonsalves, going for a third term in the next general elections, faces an uphill task to reverse the numbers which obtained in the referendum. In addition, the decline of the banana industry in the island, as well as the effects of the recession that has hit both Britain and the United States, leave an economy which has not gained any real buoyancy since the country’s last general elections in 2005. The efforts of Gonsalves to seek assistance from Venezuela and Libya, and from Iran, Turkey and other countries mainly for the construction of the airport and paying land owners, while assisting the Prime Minister in his developmental policies, have not done much to enhance the possibilities of employment in St Vincent.

In that context, he may well be justified in feeling that any serious external effort by the opposition, with substantial help from the external groups which he has named, could well push them over the top. He may therefore not be calling wolf, but recognizing a real threat to his party’s future longevity in power.

Source: Stabroek News

The O’Flaherty Brothers of Wexford have a diverse range of shipping interests ranging from a fishing trawler fleet, a short-sea coaster and ferries under the
Celtic Link Ferries banner, writes Jehan Ashmore.
The shipping family can now also claim to have operations in the far-flung seas of the Caribbean Sea through the chartering of their freight-ferry Diplomat (1978/16,776grt)
which was replaced late last year by Norman Voyager (2008/26,500grt) on the Rosslare-Cherbourg route.

Diplomat spent the winter laid-up at Waterford, where the 32-year vessel was one of the largest vessels to dock at the city-centre quays and formed a temporary albeit floating landmark.

In April the veteran departed Irish shores to take up a new career in the Caribbean. The Diplomat now serves three weekly round trips between the ports of Mayaguez and the
capital of San Juan in Peurto Rico and Rio Haina and San Domingo, the capital in the Dominican Republic, which shares the large island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

In an earlier career, the Diplomat whilst serving as the Baltic Ferry, was requistioned by the British Military of Defence as part of the Falkland Islands task force in the war
with Argentina in 1982. The vessel saw action which involved Royal Air Force Harrier Jump-Jets landing on the cargo-deck using the aircraft’s unique vertical take-off lift
(VTOL) capability.

Another vessel under the O’Flaherty sphere of operations, Finnforest (1978/15,525grt), a sistership of Diplomat and built from a series of successful Searunner-class vessels
ordered by Stena Rederi, returned to Dublin early this year. The vessel had spent several years on charter to Finnlines serving in the Baltic Sea between Helsinki and Gdynia, Poland.

Finnforest like the Diplomat underwent dry-docking at Dublin, with both vessels heading afterwards for lay-up periods at Waterford. Finnforest remains laid-up
awaiting a charter while berthed alongside the city-centre’s disused quays on the Co. Kilkenny side of the River Suir.

Source: AFLOAT

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