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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Karamath award a meaningful development in journalism

by

20121003

Every­body's trip­ping over them­selves com­ment­ing on the mer­its or de­mer­its of the 2012-13 bud­get and oth­er top­i­cal is­sues on the na­tion­al agen­da. These al­so in­clude the dis­put­ed num­ber of per­sons who signed the PNM-in­spired pe­ti­tion (as chal­lenged by the Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal) and re­port­ed­ly de­liv­ered to the Pres­i­dent.

Al­so the telling dis­clo­sure by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of a $5 mil­lion cheque from CLI­CO to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment for the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign which has not been de­nied by the op­po­si­tion par­ty. Lead­ing the charge against the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion's fis­cal pack­age is of course the loy­al op­po­si­tion through its po­lit­i­cal and Op­po­si­tion leader, Kei­th Row­ley.

While I am tempt­ed to deal to­day with the pro­vi­sions of the bud­get and some of the is­sues be­ing raised by Dr Row­ley, I want to turn our at­ten­tion to an­oth­er mat­ter which might ap­pear to be an in­signif­i­cant is­sue, but which is tru­ly a mean­ing­ful de­vel­op­ment with re­spect to jour­nal­ism in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be­fore go­ing there I want to re­it­er­ate that I am no, was nev­er, and nev­er would be, moved by the ap­par­ent na­tion­al hys­te­ria when­ev­er bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is pre­sent­ed.

My main rea­son for be­ing so lethar­gic is that I have nev­er heard of any­one drop­ping dead as a re­sult of the bud­getary mea­sures. If the price of al­co­hol or what­ev­er is in­creased, we Tri­nis may mo­men­tar­i­ly cuss and very soon af­ter head to our favourite wa­ter­ing hole and drink our but­tocks away-of course in a safe and re­spon­si­ble man­ner es­pe­cial­ly in this era of the breathal­yser.

So all those who want to be pulling their hairs out (es­pe­cial­ly my PNM pals) try­ing to de­monise new Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's first such ex­er­cise, go ahead and raise your pres­sure, but I am cool as what they say, pap­py. But if you ask me what I think about the pack­age, at a cur­so­ry look, on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it an eight. Ok my PNM friends, cuss all you want. I don't care. The facts can­not be dis­put­ed and I shall deal with why I give it such a high rat­ing in sub­se­quent ar­ti­cles.

So let's get to the is­sue at hand to­day. Last week Wednes­day I was priv­i­leged to at­tend a two-in-one cer­e­mo­ny held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel: The launch of the very in­for­ma­tive trav­el­ogue Touch­ing the Trin­i­ty, writ­ten by award-win­ning In­di­an jour­nal­ist and film crit­ic Manoj Barpu­jari, and the an­nounce­ment of the 2011 win­ner of the Hafeez Kara­math Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship Award.

The pro­gramme is named af­ter the late CEO of the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny in his name and de­signed to up­lift the stan­dard of jour­nal­ism in the coun­try. I had the fur­ther plea­sure of ad­dress­ing the func­tion, at which for­mer Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney was a spe­cial guest in that he was the fea­ture speak­er when the award was first pre­sent­ed two years ago to Barpu­jari, who was a judge in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val which end­ed Tues­day night.

It is tru­ly a fan­tas­tic pub­li­ca­tion as Barpu­jari was able to suc­cinct­ly cap­ture so much of Trinidad and To­ba­go's so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and cul­tur­al sce­nar­ios. As I told the au­di­ence, I swore he was a true Tri­ni, giv­en how he so graph­i­cal­ly de­scribe the many gen­res of life in T&T in days gone by and present-day sit­u­a­tions.

It is true that with the all-in­clu­sive in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ba­sic in­for­ma­tion on just about any­thing un­der the sun can be un­earthed, but the depths that Barpu­jari delved and the pas­sion he has put in­to the pub­li­ca­tion makes it manda­to­ry read­ing.

Al­though print­ed in In­dia he chose Port-of-Spain to launch the book, a fact which was not lost on the com­pa­ny's CEO Yash­mid (El­lis) Kara­math, who is de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue the lega­cy of his broth­er par­tic­u­lar­ly in the jour­nal­ism field.

The schol­ar­ship award, which was grant­ed to Snela Haz­ari­ka Ram­per­sad this year, of­fers lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand their hori­zons through a com­pet­i­tive mode and which is open to all prac­ti­tion­ers in the Fourth Es­tate. Mr Kara­math ex­pressed his sup­port of a rec­om­men­da­tion I made that the pro­gramme be ex­pand­ed to in­clude a spe­cial cat­e­go­ry for the best in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter.

He is will­ing to meet with the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go to bring the sug­ges­tion to fruition and ex­plained he has an abid­ing faith in the in­tegri­ty of our jour­nal­ists and every ef­fort should be made to en­cour­age us to fine-tune our craft. So I ex­pect MATT to jump at this op­por­tu­ni­ty soon­er rather than lat­er to take up Mr Kara­math on his of­fer.


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