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Mr Mitchell, No Forex to Travel

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AZP News Commentary

Alicia Chamely
By Alicia Chamely

MY birthday is on Tuesday. 39. The last year of my youth according to my son, who strongly believes you aren’t a real adult until you turn 40, so technically I am still young. What a gem that child is.

Therefore, it is quite unfortunate that I will be entering the last year of my youth in a state of great annoyance.

The itch of annoyance first began about 11 days ago when Minister of Tourism Randall Mitchell, whose brain is obviously on vacation, urged Trini’s to travel outside of T&T to gain a greater appreciation of how sweet we simple-minded complainers have it here regarding the cost of living.

Sir, sir, while I have noticed that there is a significant amount of people who would rather than use their access to the internet to pretend T&T is the only country on planet earth to educate themselves about the international economic climate; most of us are not complete ignoramuses… despite what you and your colleagues like to believe.

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I have two gigantic issues with Mitchell’s utterances.

Firstly, acknowledging the rising cost of living, it should be obvious that people do not have the extra money for luxuries such as out of country vacations. For many their salaries barely cover necessities. So, explain to me where people are getting this extra money to go travel… waiting for the answer Mr Mitchell… ahh that’s right scratching your head now huh?

Secondly, for those who can afford to travel, where are they getting the US needed to fund their trips? You may not have this problem, but for us plebs getting US, even if it is US we have in locally based US accounts, is a nightmare.

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In recent times, including this past week, more and more banks have cut the US spending limits on credit cards. Foreign hotels sadly don’t take payment in T&T… many accommodations in Tobago will only take US.

If you do manage to secure your accommodation with your US limit, how are you going to fund the rest of your trip?

Ahh that’s right, take out numerous credit cards, adding to your bills that need to be paid from your already over-stretched salary.

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Or one month you book your hotel, one month you book your car rental, and every month until you travel you line up for hours praying you can withdraw a measly amount of US cash to hide under your mattress, so when you travel you pay for food.

Regarding our Forex crisis, the government has been all but mum. Denials and vague assurances, but absolutely no assurances. No plans, no solutions, nothing.

But let’s travel to see how great we have it. So great that I suspect with the increasing unavailability of Forex, we will see smaller retailers go under or downsize to the bare minimum. Larger retailers’ prices will increase, as many of them will be forced to buy US at higher prices from outside of the banking system. Money laundering will become a major problem as we’ll see an increased presence of sketchy black market “sellers” appearing to fill the gaps. And well our paychecks will become more and more useless.

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We should all take vacations though and just reflect on how sweet we have it… for now.

As if this wasn’t annoying enough, I became further annoyed, if not outright enraged at the grotesque politicisation of the sacred religious festival of Divali.

What happened to light over darkness, spreading goodwill and kindness? Instead, all we got was political and religious division stemming from the incredibly repulsive behaviour of our politicians. The Divali Nagar this year was turned into a battleground, the United National Congress versus the People’s National Movement.

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And it upset me. I am a firm believer that religion and politics should stay separate. Holy traditions should not be dragged into a political back-and-forth. Frankly, I don’t think any political leaders should be invited to speak at religious events, protocol or not. As a catholic, if the prime minister, leader of the opposition or president, was invited to give greetings at Easter Mass, I would get up and leave the church. The Nagar isn’t a gimmicky Divali attraction, it is a celebration of the Hindu faith and should be treated and respected as such.

We forget it is our religious and cultural diversity that makes us so beautifully unique, and we should not let politics drive a wedge between us.

So, I am annoyed. Perhaps the copious amounts of cake I plan on eating this week will help ease the sting of stupidity, but I am not sure.

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