Bartlett launches welfare programme for elderly, shut-in

ROSE HALL, St James — EAST Central St James Member of Parliament Edmund Bartlett on Sunday launched a welfare programme for the elderly in his constituency.

Bartlett has also formed a group of young ladies in his community, named Ed’s Tulips, who has been mandated to address the needs of the senior citizens within the constituency.

“There are some old ladies and gentlemen who can’t walk and can’t leave the house, and some of them have worthless pickney who don’t give them nothing,” said Bartlett, “but the Tulips are going to go around and comb their hair and they are also going to go around and help to clean their house, and wash a little clothes here and there, and generally to be helpful to the elderly in the constituency.”

The Tulips are also tasked with ensuring that the elderly are registered on the PATH programme and that they receive their pensions.

Additionally, Bartlett announced a feeding programme for the elderly to commence in January 2015.

“The most important thing we want to do is that we want to see to it that the old people who can’t get attention, and whose children don’t look after them, that they get something to eat,” Bartlett said.

“So once a week, starting in January, they will come around with a little lunch on a Sunday, they will visit the people to find out who don’t have anything to eat and give them a little lunch so that they will have something to eat,” he said.

Bartlett announced the programmes during an address at an award ceremony called an Evening of Excellence for Senior Citizens at the John Rollins Success Primary School in Barrett Town in St James.

During the ceremony, Bartlett also presented plaques to the elderly who have served the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) over the years.

— Horace Hines

View the original article here

Bartlett launches welfare programme for elderly, shut-in

Bartlett discusses trade with Dookeran in Port-of-Spain

BY BALFORD HENRY Snr Staff Reporter

Friday, February 14, 2014    

NEWLY appointed Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Edmund Bartlett, says that meeting Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Dookeran, last week, has convinced him that the bilateral trade issues can be resolved through dialogue.

“He is a very learned man, articulate in foreign diplomacy, and we have a common appreciation of the need for a new architecture in the regional integration movement,’” Bartlett told Caribbean Business Report on Wednesday, after the weekly meeting of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), which he chairs.

Barlett said that, like Dookeran, he believes that Caribbean economic integration is a critical plank for deeper relationship between the two countries he sees as most critical to the survival of CARICOM.

He said that he discussed with Dookeran at his office in Port-of-Spain, issues relating to the trade imbalance between both countries; broadening the Caribbean economic space to include non-anglophone countries in the region; as well as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the implications for relationships between the region and the United States and Canada.

Bartlett and Opposition spokesman on Finance and Planning, Audley Shaw, both returned home from Port-of-Spain last week-end, after attending the two-day ParlAmericas Workshop 07, which took place February 5-6, at the Hilton Trinidad & Conference Centre.

ParlAmericas, a forum for parliamentarians in the hemisphere, hosted the capacity-building workshop with the theme, ‘Strengthening Parliamentary Budget Oversight in the Caribbean – Phase 2′, to provide a space for oversight parliamentarians and auditors general to increase their regional knowledge and share best practices.

Prior to leaving for Trinidad and Tobago last week, Bartlett paid a courtesy call on Trinidad and Tobago’s High Commissioner in Kingston, Dr. Iva Camille Gloudon.

View the original article here

Bartlett discusses trade with Dookeran in Port-of-Spain