New York Amsterdam News

January 13 2012

Opinion

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

LAGOS, Nigeria –  This was supposed to be the year the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, began to deliver on his campaign promises.

After all he was the leader whose campaign proved you didn’t have to be born with a silver spoon or even have shoes as a child, and yet still be elected president of Africa’s most populous nation.

But it’s all gone horribly wrong. Now everyone wants his head. Or at least his resignation.

Even before the year began, the fundamentalist Islamic sect, Boko Haram, detonated a bomb inside a Catholic church _ killing four and injury many during the morning mass on Christmas Day, just outside the capital city, Abuja.

Jonathan, fortuitous throughout his political career, couldn’t seem to get handle on the fringe group who want Christians out of the Northern regions and an end to Western education for Nigerians.

The militants seem just interested in destabilizing his government. And they responded to his meek declarations of emergency by four more attacks.

As Nigerians were recovering from the spate of attacks and collectively resisting the urge for reprisal attacks, the Jonathan administration shocked everyone.

On Jan 1, it imposed an immediate removal of the $7 billion fuel subsidy that has kept gas prices in this oil-producing nation low for decades. The price would jump 120 percent in price.

In Abuja on New Year’s Day I couldn’t even find a place to fill up, but the next day gas prices doubled, to about $3.50 per gallon from about $1.70 per gallon. Labor unions were incensed and called for the ‘mother of all protests’ nationwide for the next week

Successive governments have failed to provide constant electricity, portable water or reliable mass transit so Nigerians have resorted to doing it themselves over the years. Residents and businesses must have gas and diesel powered generators, to switch to when the frequent power cuts occur.

So when gas prices go up, everything else does: food, baked goods, bus and cab fares, everything. All this in a country where many live on under $2-a-day. And so the masses, spurred on by Labor unions have taken to the streets in nearly every major city in Nigeria.

Thousands of fed up citizens both young and old, professional and working class have had enough. ‘Occupy Nigeria’ has taken hold with emails, Blackberry instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter directing thousands to demonstrate, including outside the Nigerian embassy in Washington D.C.

The grievances have moved beyond gas prices to transparency, good government and corruption in the administration.

In the mega-metropolis that is Lagos, everything’s been shut down. Strange for a city that like New York never sleeps. In addition to slogans, some carried coffins with signs saying ‘RIP Goodluck.’

Streets are either eerily empty and quiet or filled with demonstrators. Malls, movie theaters, banks, restaurants, markets all remained closed. Gas stations stayed shut. “They are too scared to sell” one driver told me.

The few drivers on the roads affixed leaves to their cars as signs of being part of the peaceful protest.

Jonathan’s move to slash expenditures among his executive team as well as announced ‘palliative measures’ like introduction of over a 1,000 buses for transportation has done nothing to ease the fracture.

He and his economic team, lead by the former World Bank managing director and technocrat, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala insist that the removal is necessary and those funds would be better served developing other areas.

Perhaps.

Due to government ineptitude over the years, this country is forced to import much of its gasoline even though it is a leading crude oil exporter.

Its own refineries are crumbling so it pays middlemen who import its own now refined product. The middlemen have become wealthy, while most have only gotten a benefit of the affordable gas they need for everything.

By Day 3 of the demonstrations, airports remained closed and a few international carriers were able to leave Lagos with the airport staff moving at a snail’s pace causing flight delays and scrambling at check-in counters.

Labor unions now accuse the government forces of using ‘armed thugs’ to attack protesters as the death tolls mount in different cities. Sixteen dead so far with two confirmed from police bullets. Jonathan’s government denies the ‘armed thugs charge’ and police have arrested the cop shooters.

Yet the government seems to have lost its way. The entire nation now seems to have turned against them, an outcome the militant Boko Haram extremist group couldn’t accomplish, with bombs.

“Goodluck will get tired, we won’t get tired,” some protested chanted at me as I steered my American companion through the streets.

It’s seems Jonathan’s luck has finally run out with his gift-wrapped gift to Boko Haram.

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By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

New York Amsterdam News

Nov 27-Dec 3, 2008

 KAMPALA - Nathaniel Okeji looks out from the balcony to the gargantuan Mulago Hospital across the dirt road and shakes his head in awe.

On this spring day, the Nigerian military doctor is on a break from the intensive lectures he and 22 other African doctors are receiving from Uganda’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI).

As the cacophony of dialects hum around him, Okeji a pediatrician marveled at how Ugandan doctors successfully test newborns for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In his home country, he has to wait until the infants are at least 18 months old.

“I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing here,” Okeji says. He’s been making the rounds with IDI doctors for the past three weeks.

“We are going to bring an entirely new face to HIV management in Nigeria, especially among the military. The standard here is exactly almost what I’ve been seeing going abroad the in the UK or USA. As far as I’m concerned, the USA is now here in Uganda.”

Along with Okeji, the Nigerian government has dispatched eight other doctors to this inconspicuous single-story Ugandan clinic, nestled in the hills that surround Kampala.

Since opening in 2004, this state-of-the-art facility has become the go-to institution African countries trying to effectively manage HIV treatment, as well as others looking to learn what works in developing nations.

The institute is dwarfed in size by its neighbor, Mulago Hospital, Uganda’s national hospital.

Mulago’s expansive grounds and blue and white walls are familiar to some moviegoers, as scenes form “The Last King of Scotland” were shot there.

IDI is showing consistently that premium care can be given even without having investments in numerous brick-and-mortar structures. Its patients, called friends, are regaining their foothold in society after being pulled from certain death.

Other African nations have taken note of Uganda’s success in bringing a sizable chunk of its population back from the brink of death and looked to its successful roadmap to treating millions infected with HIV.

For Patrick Makelele, one of two Zambian doctors who came for the IDI training program, a need to learn to successfully managing patients on antiretroviral therapies brought him to Kampala.

“My expectation is to update my skills in ART management, get the latest [information] . . . basically to learn from the huge experience of Uganda,” says Makelele, who is employed to support Zambia public health ministry.

Andrew Kambugu, 35, the institute’s head of clinical services, says training in the management of malaria, the continent’s other great scourge, is also offered to doctors. And he says dividends are already being paid in the region.

“The outlook for this institute is to be a regional institute serving [all of] Africa, not just Uganda. One of the initial stimuli for the development of this institute was to have a program that would impact beyond Uganda.”

So far, 28 African countries have sent close to 2,000 medical professionals there to be trained. Skills are then passed on to doctors and nurses who could not be there.

IDI has set up an on-call center manned by two pharmacists daily to take calls and emails from doctors and nurses from across the continent whom they’ve trained.

“A doctor might call and say ‘I started my patient on these three drugs and he’s come back later and his body has broken out in a rash. His eyes are swollen and red. What could be the cause?’” explains Rabinah Lukwago.

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

November 27, 2008

Kampala, UGANDA

In the 1980s, when the disease dubbed ‘slim’ was first spotted in villages on the shores of Lake Victoria, it seemed a stretch that Uganda would one day get her hands around the pandemic that would go on to decimate much of Africa.

And yet for millions of Africans, a beacon of hope has emerged here. In large part, due to the work emanating from a clinic nestled in the hills of this dusty, traffic-choked metropolis.More than 25 million African lives have been lost to AIDS but since its doors opened in 2004, the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) has been on the forefront of the continent’s AIDS war.
Founded by academics, the multi-million dollar facility was built to provide, research and first-world patient care.  The Global Fund, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are primary funders of its programs.
After being pulled back from the brink of death, many IDI patients are regaining their foothold in society.
“People are well. They are going back to work, they are looking for spouses if they’ve lost their loved ones and they are looking to live life again,” said Andrew Kambugu, head of clinical services at IDI, where operating costs are about $2 million annually.
African doctors are flocking here for training to help them replicate Uganda’s success, and Western doctors keep coming.
“It’s like Piccadilly Circus! Everybody comes to Uganda and everybody comes to IDI,” said Phillipa Easterbrook, who left London’s Kings College run IDI’s research department.
But just a few yards from the ultra-modern IDI with its controlled temperatures, freshly scrubbed floors, and myriad water coolers, sits the famed Mulago Hospital.

Mulago Hospital

The gargantuan Mulago, is Uganda’s premier teaching hospital. Whatever puzzles doctors, they send to Mulago.
Moviegoers might recognize its blue and white walls and lush grounds, since many scenes from The Last King of Scotland were shot there.  From the outside, it seems serene and tranquil like a quintessential place to heal.
But once inside, it turns tragic.
Especially in ward 4-A, the infectious disease ward that feels like a morgue-in-waiting. Patients, who happen to the poorest of the poor, once admitted, rarely make it.
There are hardly any facilities and what’s there, is threadbare. The few ripped, paper-thin mattresses, that seem to be four decades old, propped on aging rusty metal beds aren’t available for all.  There aren’t any sheets or even pillows and so some make do with the concrete floor.
Oxygen tanks, sit there not functioning. Drip stands? There are a few that are barely working.
There aren’t drapes on the windows, so birds routinely fly in. And the walls appear not to have been repainted since 1962 when the hospital opened by the Duchess of Kent with working faucets and proper lighting.
On any given night, one single nurse has to take care of some 50 to 80 patients, whose families simply resort to prayer.  When young expatriates come to IDI, and then volunteer at Mulago with AIDS and tuberculosis patients, that grim reality knocks them for a loop.
And some decided ‘enough was enough.’

Dr Shevin Jacob

“We just decided we weren’t going to take it anymore,” said Shevin Jacob, 32, from Chicago. He and other colleagues  asked IDI’s director, Alex Coutinho to visit the nearby ward.  Coutinho did and left his plush office into to see what had become of 4-A.

Over the years many Uganda physicians have trained at the infectious disease ward but hardly get to return and so the thinking among some is that few know how bad it has deteoriated.

“He probably hadn’t been here since his student days,” Jacob added.

Despite millions in donor funding for miracle drugs, Uganda’s entire health care system is challenged.  Mulago is mandated to give care at low cost and the 800-bed facility routinely faces 1,000-plus patients who need admission daily.
“Patients deserve their dignity, regardless of income,” said Mohammed Lamorde, a physician/researcher, who left Nigeria to settle in Kampala because of IDI.
Yet many doctors cannot reconcile the flush facilities of the Infectious Disease Institute and the decrepit infectious disease ward at Mulago.
Even though dusty dirt roads lead up to the IDI campus, its labs are only one of three certified by College of American Pathologists (CAP) in Africa.  Officials were elated when they were picked as the second runner up in the annual ‘Lab of the Year’ 2008, by Medical Lab Observer, an industry trade publication.
“Have you seen how much bottled water we have? And just across the way patients are starving. What’s this supposed to do to our mental health?” fumes one doctor.
By April, after the quiet but steady and forceful complaints from several staffers, IDI brass settled on a ‘4-A project.’  An appeal to donors to funnel some funds to the ward was instituted. 4-A has been adopted by IDI.
Officials say $122 could get life saving medicine for four patients for a week, $600 would get them an oxygen system; $1,223 could get a new hospital bed; and $12,232 for a total renovation. Money has begun to come in.
Jacob who decided to take position at a Seattle hospital last summer, vows to follow up on the progress.

“I will be back to see it through.”

This report is supported by the Project for International Health Journalism Fellowship Program as part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program.  Edozien is the director of New York University’s ‘Reporting Africa’ program.

Useful links
IDI:  www.idi.ac.ug
Mulago: www.mulago.or.ug
Donations can be made by contacting idi_communications@idi.co.ug

Copyright New York Amsterdam News Nov 27-Dec 3, 2008

SAYS HE’D HAVE YANKED QUINN’S LEDGER DOMAIN

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

April 4 2008 - Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that he had no idea the city budget allocated millions of dollars to phantom organizations at the request of Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office - and that he would never have signed off on the spending plan had he known. April 4, 2008 — “This is the first I’ve heard of it . . . There’s an investigation, and until I see the results of the investigation, I really can’t comment,” Bloomberg said yesterday when asked about The Post’s front-page report.

When pressed about the revelations funds for dozens of sham groups - including the “Immigration Improvement Project of New York” and the “Association of Community Partners” - were slipped into the budget, Bloomberg said:

“If I found there were fake organizations in there, do you really think that I would sign the budget? Thank you very much. I would hope you’d expect a little more from me, for goodness sake.”

The mayor didn’t attack Quinn for the practice, calling her “the most honest person I know.”

The Post yesterday detailed how Quinn’s office hid millions in taxpayer dollars by allocating them to nonexistent organizations as a way of holding on to funds to dole out later in the year after the budget had been passed.

Sources said those monies were eventually awarded to legitimate groups as political favors to council members, but Quinn, who intends to run for mayor next year, insisted the funds were used to correct mistakes and oversights.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson, also a potential mayoral candidate next year, said that the report raised “serious concerns” and that such actions “would represent a breach of public trust.”

The shady bookkeeping is now the subject of probes by the city Department of Investigation and the US Attorney’s Office.

“We can confirm that the listing under fictitious organizations has gone back to 2001,” Quinn told reporters yesterday.

Late yesterday, Quinn released records that show the practice started with five fake groups totaling $1.1 million.

By fiscal year 2007, it had ballooned to 18 groups and amounted to about $3.6 million.

Quinn and her aides have said that the money was eventually awarded to dozens of legitimate groups across the city and that there were no allegations that those organizations did anything improper.

Quinn said that she ordered her staff several months ago to halt the practice of listing sham groups in the budget but that her aides disobeyed her and continued it.

Quinn’s predecessor as speaker, Gifford Miller, under whose watch the practice expanded, didn’t return calls for comment.

But the prior speaker, Peter Vallone of Queens, whose last budget in 2001 included funding for several nonexistent groups, said he knew nothing about it.

“To use a false name? That never went on when I was there . . . It’s a complete surprise to me,” Vallone told The Post.

Quinn’s potential mayoral rival, Tony Avella (D-Queens), blasted the speaker.

“It is absolutely disgraceful that we’re using phony organizations to set aside money that could be later used down the road for political bribery,” he said.

Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), a frequent Quinn nemesis, said: “I find it hard to believe that it was just staff. It is illogical to think she didn’t know about this because she has to use the money.”

But Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn) said he didn’t have much of a problem with Quinn’s aides reserving funds for unforeseen expenses.

“In this case, the only thing that’s terribly wrong is the bogus organizations. That’s all,” Felder said.

Felder added that there has to be “a reserve fund when things come up that were not anticipated to be able to help organizations that are in desperate need of money just because somebody made a clerical error.”

Betsy Lyman of the Citizens Budget Commission said the allocations to phantom groups “flies in the face of good government,” especially since Quinn has made an issue of making the budget more transparent to the everyday New Yorker.

Dick Dadey, of the Citizens Union, an organization that has long lauded Quinn’s reform proposals, agreed, saying, “This problem is inconsistent with her efforts as budget reformer.”

Meanwhile, Quinn said she was “not the target” of the investigations and insisted she blew the whistle by telling investigators as soon as she discovered it.

“I stand by the fact that there has never been a council speaker who has been as committed to transparency and clarity in the city budget as I have been,” she said.

Quinn said she was shocked that her instructions were ignored.

“The vast majority of the people who work for me are dedicated public servants who implement the wishes of myself and my colleagues . . . so obviously it’s the last thing I would expect that a direct and clear instruction would not be followed.”

QUINN OFFICE PROBED OVER BOGUS GRANT GROUPS

EXCLUSIVE

By FRANKIE EDOZINN

April 3, 2008 — City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office hid millions of taxpayer dollars by allocating grants to phantom organizations as a way of holding the funds to dole out political favors later - bogus bookkeeping that is the subject of city and federal probes, The Post has learned. Among the dozens of fabricated groups that were slated to receive funds were the “Immigration Improvement Project of New York” ($300,000), the “Coalition for a Strong Special Education” ($400,000) and the “American Association of Concerned Veterans” ($422,7The total amount set aside in 2007 and 2008 for the fake organizations - which are each listed by name in the city budget after being inserted at the council’s request - was $4.7 million. In the two years, 30 phantom groups were listed, council aides confirmed.

The money, in effect, became a slush fund for the speaker and was later used at Quinn’s discretion to reward groups that were loyal to her and to fund favored council members’ pet projects, sources told The Post.

The scheme gave “the speaker a stash of cash with which to thank or pay off politically important allies or cooperative council members,” a source said.

Quinn insisted in an interview yesterday with The Post that all of the taxpayer funds were ultimately used for legitimate purposes.

The never-before-exposed practice of hiding the funds dates to 1988, council aides said last night.

“It was used at the speaker’s discretion,” said an insider who worked for the council at the time it was headed by Quinn’s predecessor, Gifford Miller. “People would come in and say ‘We need money for this or that.’ ”

Sources said it may have been started to make an end run around the City Charter, which requires that all funds be allocated at the start of the fiscal year. That limits the speaker’s ability to dole out monies throughout the year as needs arise.

In the interview, Quinn, who plans to run for mayor next year and has made “transparency” in budgeting one of her pet causes, admitted she knew some funds were being held in reserve, but learned only several months ago they had been allocated to sham organizations.

Quinn said she ordered that the shady practice be abolished and only recently discovered her staff had not complied.

“I was kind of sick over the fact that there were things listed in the budget that were not accurate and that my instructions to the staff were disregarded,” Quinn told The Post.

When she learned several months ago that the practice had continued, Quinn said she turned over information about the bogus bookkeeping to “appropriate authorities,” including the city Department of Investigation and the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office.

Quinn’s aides insist she blew the whistle on the practice, but authorities have been investigating some aspect of the council’s finances since last year, sources have said.

Quinn recently hired an outside law firm to help comply with requests from investigators for documents and information dating back several years.

In a development that sources said was tied to the scandal, two of Quinn’s top finance aides were either forced out or resigned earlier this year.

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

March 20, 2008 — The number of city cops will plunge to levels not seen since the early 1990s, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly testified yesterday.

Kelly told City Council members that he will follow Mayor Bloomberg’s order that agency heads cut their budgets by not hiring 1,000 officers that had been planned for.

The NYPD has had trouble in recent years hiring, and officials point to the current $25,100 starting salary as the chief reason.

“Right now, we have to do something to reduce our budget, and the 1,000-officer reduction seemed practical because we can’t hire,” Kelly said.

“We had no recruitment problems until June of ‘05 when the arbitrator lowered the starting salary . . . It’s been very difficult to recruit these past 21/2 years with a $25,100 salary in this most expensive city in North America.”

An arbitrator is expected to come up with new salary scales in the coming months.

Officials at the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association disputed Kelly’s assertions that starting salary was the problem and said overall cop salaries are the issue across the board.

They said focus groups show that salaries in general are a problem.

“The NYPD has turned its inability to maintain staffing levels into budgetary savings at a time when local community precinct houses are screaming for more police officers,” said Pat Lynch, the PBA president.

He said Kelly’s plan to reduce cops by 1,000 will “strain to the breaking point the work force that is already burdened by fighting crime and terrorism.”

But Kelly told lawmakers that the reduction would not affect current operations.

Crime is down to record levels, with murders down to 496 in 2007 - 17 percent fewer than the year before.

By July, cops would number 36,838. Right now, there are about 35,800. In 1992, there were 35,802 cops.

But lawmakers, who were full of praise for Kelly for the city’s continually dropping crime levels, were skeptical that fewer boots on the ground could sustain the low crime levels.

“Your force is so over-extended that we will not be able to continue to make the gains that we have seen in the past. I believe that we are about at that point now,” Public Safety Committee chair Peter Vallone Jr. said.

Councilmember Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) pointed out that the city had more cops in 2001 than now.

“During the worst crisis that this city ever faced we had 38,630 police officers and now we have approximately 35,548, somewhere around that. I don’t think that makes much sense.”

Monserrate, a retired cop, added, “I know if there was a Mayor Kelly right now, we would not be facing this issue.”

Kelly said after the hearing that cops would continue working to keep streets safe no mater what the numbers are.

“The Safe Street/Safe City head-count was 38,310, I believe, and the head-count that we are shooting for now is 36,838, so the numbers speak for themselves but a number of efficiencies have been brought to bear since that time.”

WENT BALLISTIC ON GAL PAYING WITH PLASTIC

 The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

CRAZY CABBY: A driver may lose his license after screaming at a passenger who tried to pay by credit card.

March 18, 2008 — A cabby who unleashed a frightening foul-mouthed tirade on a female passenger who tried to pay him with a credit card - and then drove off with her cellphone and wallet - now faces the loss of his license.

When passenger Nicole Omara, 25, reached her destination at East 75th Street and Third Avenue last September, she swiped her credit card in the yellow cab’s machine. That triggered a screaming rant from driver Ilias Jerhada, she testified at a recent hearing before an administrative law judge.

“Bitch, give me my f- - - ing money,” Omara quoted him as yelling.

She said the driver snatched her open purse, took out her wallet and cellphone and tossed the bag on the sidewalk before driving off.

Using a friend’s phone, she called police. Then she called her own phone, which Jerhada answered, still boldly demanding his money, she said.

He returned to the spot where he dropped Omara, triggering a new round of screaming just as cops pulled up.

Police had to separate the two, authorities said, but wound up arresting Jerhada when they found Omara’s property on him.

Administrative Law Judge Faye Lewis substantiated the allegations from the 4 a.m. dustup, noting Jerhada’s license had been suspended several times.

He failed to show up for the hearing, so he did not defend himself.

Lewis recommended that the Taxi & Limousine Commission fine him $500 and revoke his license. The ruling was made public last week.

Jerhada has several more days in which he can make a defense in the case.

TLC Commissioner Mathew Daus, who will issue a final decision, said yesterday it was a “particularly egregious case and we are thankful that Ms. Omara was not injured.”

Omara declined to be interviewed, pointing to criminal charges still pending against the cabby.

The case comes as the TLC is cracking down on drivers who tell riders they can’t pay by plastic.

The New York Post
By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

March 4, 2008 — Commissioner of Aging Edwin Mendez-Santiago told skeptical lawmakers yesterday the frozen meals the city is considering for seniors aren’t the average TV dinner.
“It’s not the same as when we take our own leftovers and stick it in the freezer,” the commissioner said.
“Within seconds of when the food is cooked, it’s immediately flash frozen so that when it is reheated, it’s as if it were as fresh as coming off the stove,” Santiago-Mendez testified in the City Council yesterday.
“When you go to your local supermarket to get something that might look green and fresh, that might have been flash frozen to retain its nutritional value while it was transported,” he added, saying the flash technology is used by reputable nonprofits such as God’s Love We Deliver.
After years of testing the program in The Bronx, the Bloomberg administration wants to give seniors the choice of either getting one hot meal daily or flash-frozen meals delivered twice a week.
A typical menu for the 17,000 lunches now served to seniors every day consists of appetizers, a main dish, fruits, vegetables and dessert.
Right now, officials said the myriad of contracts for senior meals cost between $2.60 to $26.04 per meal, but fewer contracts with the flash-frozen option would average $6.88 a meal.
That change would lead to fewer contracts and the ability to handle more specific requests, such as catering to diabetics, and being more culturally sensitive and offering more choices to seniors.
Currently, seniors only have two choices; kosher or regular.
Helen Foster (D-Bronx) wondered about the sodium content of the meals because she heard the food was a tad salty and asked, “Have you tasted the food yourself? I want to make sure we’re not offering something we haven’t tasted ourselves.”
Mendez-Santiago said his office and service providers had conducted numerous taste tests. “We even had Mayor Bloomberg do a taste test with some of the members of the bullpen [his office staff], and generally, across the board, people were very satisfied with the meals.”
He stressed that no senior would be forced to get the frozen meal - it would be a choice for those who would prefer not to wait for daily deliveries that might conflict with doctor’s appointments or other commitments.
Many lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s wholesale revamp of senior centers and senior meals might be moving too quickly. Lawmakers are also reluctant to sign off on a plan that takes away the daily human contact some homebound seniors have with those who deliver the food.
“Was there an outpouring of seniors who wrote the Department for the Aging, who wrote the mayor and said, ‘Listen the current system isn’t really working for me’ ” asked Melinda Katz (D-Queens).
Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx), the chair of the committee. “You guys have a year and change left in this administration. You are locking in contracts for six months. What’s the rush?
“This is a lot to bite off. I’m not confident that [the Department for the Aging] is going to be able to chew this and digest it in a year and 10 months. Whoever comes in after is going to deal with the fallout. It takes six months to a year to understand if you were successful,” she added.
City officials are taking comments on their revamp proposal from now until March 14 at conceptpaper@aging.nyc.go

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

March 3, 2008 — At least one American politician is sorry to see Fidel Castro go.
City Councilman Charles Barron said yesterday Cubans get some of the best health care in the world and he wants to study their system.
Barron leaves today for a nine-day tour of the communist island nation, where last week Castro - after 49 years at the helm - announced he would step down.
The Democratic Brooklyn councilman is going with a group of students from the City University’s Center for Worker Education, and will also tour educational facilities.
Barron told The Post he has a special fondness for Castro because of the Cuban leader’s efforts to help several African nations, particularly Angola, in their march toward independence decades ago.
“I think we should lift the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba,” said Barron, a former Black Panther Party member. He said the economic embargo was hurting Cuban citizens.
Barron’s support for Castro isn’t the first time the outspoken lawmaker has embraced an international political outcast.
Five years ago, Barron hosted a City Hall reception for Robert Mugabe, the dictatorial president of Zimbabwe, an event most council members boycotted.
Critics said Barron had ignored international outrage over Mugabe’s brutal and economically repressive regime.
It is doubtful Barron will ever get to roll out City Hall’s red carpet for the 81-year-old Castro.
The revolutionary leader hasn’t been seen publicly in almost two years since he ceded provisional authority to his younger brother, Raul.
The elder Castro made that transfer of power permanent last week when he said he was too ill to continue running the country on his own.
Barron said he is not scheduled to meet with either Castro, but said he’d welcome the opportunity should it present itself while he is there.
He added that he was eager to study the Cuban health-care system, which - echoing documentary maker Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” - he says is one of the best in the world.
The fiery councilman said he was paying for his trip with his own funds, not taxpayer allocations to his office, and that all travel was aboveboard. He is expected back March 12.
Officials at the State Department yesterday declined to comment on Barron’s plans, but in general journalists, members of non-governmental organizations and others can visit Cuba without special permission. Students, members of religious groups and relatives of Cubans require special travel documents

The New York Post  

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

February 28, 2008 — After much backroom negotiation and wrangling, the City Council passed a watered-down version of the Bloomberg administration’s “green carts” proposal.

Administration officials had hoped to flood low-income neighborhoods with 1,500 vending carts stocked with fruits and veggies to fight obesity and diabetes.

The bill was opposed by many grocers and lawmakers but was passed by the council, 37-9.

The revised version cuts down the number of carts to 1,000 and precincts where the vendors can operate from 43 to 34.

“Does this solve every problem? No. But it’s just one of many pebbles that we have to throw in an ocean of neglect where people are not taking care of themselves in a healthy way,” said Leroy Comrie, (D-Queens) chairman of the council’s Consumer Affairs committee