Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was among the many guests who at­tend­ed the NALIS and Au­thors event at the Derek Wal­cott The­atre of the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day.

Ti­tled Com­ing Home, Con­ver­sa­tions With Writ­ers fea­tured Bar­bara Jenk­ins, The Stranger Who Was My­self; Ira Math­ur, Love the Dark Days; and Judy Ray­mond, Beryl McBurnie. The pro­gramme was mod­er­at­ed by Tere­sa White–Group Di­rec­tor HR at ANSA McAL. The event al­so served as the main launch of Math­ur's book, first launched in Lon­don in Ju­ly.

The au­thors all read ex­cerpts from their books and an­swered ques­tions from guests, not on­ly about their work but al­so about their in­di­vid­ual lit­er­ary growth. They al­so field­ed ques­tions from lit­er­ary icon Earl Lovelace.

Fol­low­ing the hour-and-a-half for­mal ses­sion, there was a book­seller’s wine re­cep­tion where guests and au­thors took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share pri­vate mo­ments in con­ver­sa­tions.

De­clines ques­tions on na­tion­al is­sues

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia ap­proached Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to com­ment on mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance, but he de­clined. The PM was in­formed there were ques­tions we would like to have an­swered, but he said that he would on­ly do so if they were on the top­ic of the event at the li­brary. When in­formed they were on oth­er mat­ters, he turned this jour­nal­ist away be­fore hear­ing the ques­tions.

Guardian Me­dia hoped to pose the fol­low­ing ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter:

1 . Con­cern con­tin­ues over the ris­ing mur­der rate, now at 582. Are you still con­fi­dent in your Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds? Do you think push­ing hard­er on treat­ing crime as a pub­lic health emer­gency as you men­tioned in Ju­ly when the mur­der toll was just 273 would have saved T&T from set­ting a record this year?

2. Stake­hold­ers have called in­to ques­tion the qual­i­ty and in­tegri­ty of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects that the Gov­ern­ment has em­barked on and the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers have re­newed their will­ing­ness to act as an in­de­pen­dent over­seer of gov­ern­ment projects. Is this some­thing you are will­ing to al­low?

3. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and ex­perts such as trans­porta­tion plan­ner and traf­fic en­gi­neer Dr Rae Fur­longe have again crit­i­cised the $1.7 bil­lion Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la Project, say­ing it may not be the kind of project and ex­pen­di­ture the coun­try needs at this time of eco­nom­ic hard­ship. It’s al­so be­ing blamed for wors­en­ing the flood­ing in the San­gre Grande re­gion. How do you re­spond?

Author Ira Mathur autograph her book Love the Dark Days during Conversations With Writers at NALIS, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ