Contact Magazine April 2018

the chamber in action
The President’s
pages
Welcome to the new-look Contact!
As you can see, we have made some substantial changes to the
Chamber’s magazine. We have given it a new look and feel, a new
design. We have re-thought and re-angled the editorial. The result,
we hope, is something more like a general-interest business magazine than a
corporate statement.
In fact, we’re thinking of Contact as a forum, a meeting place where members,
and business readers generally, can discuss and debate business issues and ideas.
So please treat the arguments and ideas in these pages as the views and
opinions of the respective writers, not necessarily of the Chamber itself. Just
as a debates commission can host and preside over an election debate without
necessarily agreeing with anything the candidates say, so the Chamber can host
and preside over a lively business discussion in Contact.
Please make use of the magazine as a forum. We welcome your feedback on
this new-look version. We welcome your ideas and suggestions for future coverage.
We welcome your letters, whether about material in Contact or about general
business issues (just mark letters “Contact – for publication”).
We also welcome your advertising support, whether for informing members
and readers about your goods and services, or as a corporate presence in the
Chamber’s own magazine.
The main theme of this issue of Contact is national transformation,
appropriately enough, and we make no apology for returning to that vexed
question.
As it happens, the Chamber is very much in agreement with the broad
argument running through the articles about how to implement change in Trinidad
and Tobago.
We all know that our economic situation is dire; virtually every social and
economic sector is crying out for change and rejuvenation. But the problems are
so complex that many people feel overwhelmed, open to change but not knowing
where to start.
We want to intensify the national debate about that: where are we, where
do we need to go, what can each of us do about it? Large-scale change requires
large-scale buy-in, and that can’t develop until the nation has a clear idea of what
it needs to do.
Each one of us, therefore, has a patriotic duty to embody the change we
want to see. Every one of us is either a problem or a solution. But if, together, we
can develop clear goals, and all pull in the same direction, is there anything that
Trinidad and Tobago could not do?
Contact magazine is just one of the services and connections the Chamber
provides for its members and for readers further afield. In these pages, for
example, you will find a first-hand story written by a veteran mediator about
the experience of mediating an industrial dispute at the Dispute Resolution Centre.
04
Trinidad
and Tobago Chamber
of Industry and Commerce
www.chamber.org.tt/contact-magazine