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