News
Norm & Jeffrey: Making A Difference one bag of trash at a time; Selfless Duo commit to a cleaner TCI
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
Norman Rogers
#TurksandCaicos, June 6, 2022 – ‘Everyday unless it rains’ is how often Norman Rogers walks along the roadways of Providenciales, often he wears a shirt with large red letters that any passerby will be able to read. It says “One Man Can Make A Difference.” It’s the same shirt that Norm wears proudly, turning to show the camera over Zoom during our interview. It’s a gift, he explains, from a young man he has deeply inspired with his daily routine, because Norm isn’t just walking, he’s cleaning up the Turks and Caicos.
Norman and his wife first visited the islands in 2002, fell in love with the turquoise water and moved here shortly after, but it wasn’t until his heart attack in 2003 that Norm, an avid birdwatcher, decided to start walking along one of the TCIs uninhabited islands in the mornings and to get his body moving. That’s when he noticed something.
“The litter on the island was getting in the way of the birds.” he explained “And so I started carrying around a garbage bag whenever I started to go out there to take photos of the birds.”
That was the start of what has become a legacy of environmentalism on the islands. Norm has been picking up litter on a regular schedule for the last 16 years, but in 2020 with the advent of quarantines and lockdowns amidst the Coronavirus pandemic he set out walking further and further in either direction of his home each day and didn’t like what he was seeing; he knew he had to expand, and now his current routes are simply incredible. They are organized so as to cover as much ground as he can.
“I’ve got 17 different sections that I clean up and some of them get done every two weeks, some every three weeks and some every four weeks.”
In the four weeks since he has been working a fairly new route in the direction of Governor’s road he has managed to haul in an astonishing 85 bags of trash. Even more surprising is that he has not done this route every day, since he maintains his original routes as well.
“I go out every day from 7:15 to about 9:30 the only days I don’t go out are when it’s raining or occasionally I take a day off,” he explained, “In life I’ve been told that one person can’t make a difference and I thought that I could.”
His total bags each day on this new route range between four and seven but he says this is only because no one has cleaned this area up in a while. Norman says the trick is getting Islanders to maintain the clean. That’s where Jeffrey Nicolas comes in.
The other half of this environmentalist duo Jeffery met Norm at the gym and was so inspired by the older man’s tenacity that he started organizing larger cleanups on his own. And with the help of the Rotaract Club, Jeffery has organized tens of islanders to do their part in cleaning up and he also advocates for recycling with large hotels and locals, holding talks with the Hotel Association to see how the littering issue can be resolved. He maintained that recycling was both beneficial to the environment and to hoteliers.
“We’re Beautiful by Nature we have to keep in Clean by Choice” he said seriously. Norm added his own spin “We wanna keep it beautiful by nature but not desecrated by man.”
The men both agree that the most sustainable way to rid the Turks and Caicos of litter is to start working at the source.
Jeffrey Nicolas
Norman explained, “We would like to promote not littering to begin with, the government is doing a good job of cleaning up some areas but at the same time there’s things that we need to do to help ourselves. To me it starts with Education, we need to teach the kids in school…start with the young.”
Jeffrey added, “We need to start to conditioning the minds of the people, I think all of us love Turks and Caicos we’re just not aware of the problem because a lot of the time we’re not looking on the side of the road until it becomes like a little dump.”
Jeffery explains that not only do Islanders need to be educated on the issue more preventative infrastructure like bins on the highway needs to be put into place.
“You’re driving and you throw a bottle out the window because you have nowhere to put it thinking it’s just one bottle but it adds up. I’ve done cleanups in Blue Hill and Five Cays, where in one day we get up to 50 bags”
For those who don’t know where to start the men say spend five or ten minutes cleaning up the area in front of your home, food businesses cleaning up their trash would also be a good start they say especially since a great deal of the trash they recover are food containers which eventually make their way into the oceans.
The biggest takeaway from duo is that one man, maybe two CAN make a difference.
You can make a different on your yard on your street, in your community and on your island; it only takes starting.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, April 19, 2024 – In an attempt to move to 24-hour-a-day operations Turks and Caicos Islands Airports Authority (TCIAA) is steadily recruiting Air Traffic Controllers to work at the Providenciales/Howard Hamilton International Airport, according to Godfrey Smith, TCIAA CEO, reporting to the Appropriations Committee.
Speaking on April 8th Smith said a cabinet paper would be sent soon requesting six more Air Traffic Controllers to make round the clock operation at the Provo International possible and to open the airport in Grand Turk till 12 a.m.
Currently, 17 posts are filled and seven are vacant.
Smith was candid with his responses to recent industrial action from ATCs which led to resignations and firings.
“What we have to do is find systems to mitigate such actions and that has to start with filling these jobs, putting people in that want to
work and doing right by people – and we always try to do right by our staff. Persons may not think that we are but we always do – we ain’t pick no fight,” he said in the meetings held at the NJS Francis building ahead of the National Budget Communication.
Smith indicated that recruitment was an issue across the board, ‘we need to find ways to recruit a little bit better’ he told the committee. Also in need of a push was capital spending or projects according to the CEO, who said the agency had ‘not been very good’ at meeting that mark but insisted they had recognized the issue and could do better.
A very important key performance indicator drawn up by the TCIAA is increasing passenger satisfaction at the Howard Hamilton International Airport. For the TCIAA part of this means a 30 percent increase in seating by Q2 of this year.
When queried on if they could even handle this increase the CEO said,
“The fact of the matter is we already have the capacity there. What we need is to make the service a bit better.”
Staff shortages have become such a frustrating issue that the TCIAA is instituting a scholarship program created by Authority Chairman, Selvyn Hawkins
“What the board wants to do is basically allocate $25,000 annually for a scholarship and they’ve approved it already.”
This process would cover tuition and all other costs for one student.
The student would return as a summer intern and other breaks to work at the TCIAA and upon graduation, assume a role at the company.
“We identify a particular skill we need, we go after it and we build capacity that is in a nutshell the nexus of the program,” Smith said.
The Turks and Caicos Islands Airports Authority (TCIAA) is allocated $49 million this financial year; over $20 million goes to salaries.
Company delivers fastest speeds nationwide and boosts service reliability
PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND CAICOS, APRIL 19th, 2024 – More connections, faster speeds and greater support for customers. This is the promise from communications and entertainment provider, Flow TCI, as it embarks on an initiative to provide households with enhanced connections, greater overall reliability and now, for the first time, speeds up to one gigabit person second.
FLOW TCI Country Manager, Joanne Missick shared: “Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. We listen to our customers and want to exceed their demands, so we are focused on delivering unmatched value with customer centric products and services that are future proof. Flow subscribers on our Fibre Extreme package can now access up to one gigabyte speeds and subscribers on our Fibre Plus and Fibre Max package, as of April 1st, are also now benefitting from up to 5x more speeds.”
This is third speed boost for Flow customers in the last two years. This comes under the umbrella of the the Company’s recently launched “Working for You” campaign, where technicians are going into the neighborhoods across the island to conduct repairs, decommission copper cables, and increase the brand’s visibility in local communities.
“To date several neighborhoods have been served by technicians and the company will continue to go across the islands to ensure each neighborhood receives personal attention. We recognize that over the past few months some customers have experienced issues with the quality and delivery of our services. This is not what we stand for. Flow remains committed to providing technology and innovation
that enables growth and positively impacts lives”, says, newly appointed Head of Technical Operations, Simeon Thomas.
Thomas adds, “We have been closely monitoring and reviewing every aspect of our network and there is room for improvement across each of the islands. Where we find shortcomings, we are taking concrete actions and assigning our technicians to rapidly make all necessary adjustments and improvements for our customers”.
Flow has made significant investments in expanding and modernizing its infrastructure and delivering a more robust and reliable network paving the way for the country’s digital transformation.
For more information on speed increases visit https://www2.discoverflow.co/turks-and-caicos/price-adjustment-speed-increase on our website.
Thank you for your usual assistance in sharing our stories.
-
News6 days agoDR man rented Jet Ski nine days ago in Providenciales; where is he now?
-
Health6 days agoDengue cases rising in Region
-
TCI News2 days agoExperience Turks and Caicos and Ministry of Tourism explore development of Cruise industry at Seatrade Global Cruise Conference
-
Caribbean News5 days agoCARICOM pushes need for Reparations Tribunal at Forum in Geneva
-
Education5 days agoCampus Brawl at Clement Howell High sends students to Hospital
-
Caribbean News1 week agoCARICOM, UN applauds published decree establishing Haiti’s Transitional Government
-
Caribbean News5 days agoCARICOM sends warning as Oil prices creep higher in the Israel v Iran conflict; 14 regional states import energy
-
Bahamas News1 week ago$36 Million Dollar Upgrade for World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas